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UNDER THE BLUE SKY 



UNDER THE BLUE SKY. 



/ 

CHARLES MACKAY, 

AUTHOR OF "STUDIES FROM THE ANTIQUE," "A MAN'S HEART, 
"THE SALAMAA'DKIXE," ETC., ETC. 




LONDON: 
SAMPSON LOW, MAESTON, LOW AND SEAELE, 
CROWN BUILDINGS, FLEET STEEET. 

1871. 



{All rights reserved.) 






CIIISV.ICK PI.ESS :— PRINTED BY WHIITCTGHAM A2tD WTIIKIXS 
TOOSS COURT, CHANCERY LAKE. 




PREFACE. 




HE larger portion of the papers in the 
following collection, now for the first 
time brought together, have appeared 
during the last few years in " All the Tear 
Kound," u Eobin Goodeellow," and other perio- 
dicals. Though on different subjects, they are by 
no means unconnected, but are all, as the title 
implies, the result of open air studies of men and 
Nature — of walks and talks in the country — and 
sometimes in the town ; and all inspired, the writer 
hopes and believes, by the same spirit — a desire to 
find a soul of goodness even in things evil, and to 
make the best of the innocent enjoyments which 
Nature scatters so bountifully around for all who 



vi PREFACE. 

know 3iow to seek and profit by thera. Like 
Yictor Hugo in his u Kayons et Ombres,," the- 
author may say 

II a l'amour des eaux et des bois, 

and of all that they can teach, which is very much 
more than those imagine who have never tried 
what companionship is to be fonnd in solitude; 
and what pleasant social intercourse is to be 
enjoyed with people to whom no formal intro- 
duction has been necessary. 

September, 1871. 





CONTENTS. 







Page 


i 


i 


NTEODUCTOKY 
The Koad Mender 






1 

6 




m 


Happy Jack 

The Language of Animals 






14 

29 




The Intelligence of Plants 






47 


Country and Town Sparrows 






59 


Poor Tom ..... 






71 


A Lover of Trees ..*■■.. 






82 


Mr. Plant, the English Peasant 






. 110 


A Plea for Bare Feet 






124 


A "Wit and a Poet .... 






. 131 


lee ...... 






. 146 


Mr. Gomm's Experience of the Poor 






. 156 


Music and Misery in London . 






. 173 


The Mirth of the Million 






. 188 


Flies and Mosquitoes 






. 202 


The Physiology of Hand- Shaking . 






. 219 


The I 


ieftB 


"and : a Plea for the Neglecbec 






. 229 



viii CONTENTS. 

A Great and a Mighty City . 

The Alphabet of the Lower Creation 

A Specimen of a New Mythological Dictionary 

Growth of a London Myth . 

New Light on an old Snbject . 

On some Popular and Unpopular Poets . 



Page 

238 
256 
266 
282 
304 
328 





UNDER THE BLUE SKY. 



INTRODUCTORY. 




DEARLY love a long day's walk in the 
country, through the beautiful green 
lanes of England, through the glens and 
straths, and over the mountain summits 
of Scotland, along the margin of the sea-shore, 
over the cliffs and downs, and wherever there are 
trees and green fields, or mountains, or a sight of 
lake or ocean to be obtained. In my walks I am 
never alone. I find companionship in the wild 
flowers by the road side, in the birds upon the 
bough, in the skylark poised high in mid-air, and 
dropping his jocund notes upon the earth like so 
many diamonds of melodyo I find occupation for 
the mind in the varying aspect of the clouds, and 
the landscape; a landscape which belongs to me, 
far more than to the lord of the manor, if I admire 

B 



2 INTRODUCTORY. 

its beauty and lie does not. But though I enjoy 
the solitudes of nature, I never hold aloof from the 
companionship of man. I am fond of talking to 
farm-labourers and shepherds, to beggars and to 
tramps, to travelling tinkers, gipsies, and showmen. 
I love to study the wild flowers and weeds of 
humanity, as much as the botanist loves to study 
and classify the herbs and flowers that are too 
lowly and of too ill-repute to find a place in the 
conservatory, but which belong nevertheless to 
the great garden of God. In my intercourse 
with the waifs and strays of civilization, I always 
find that I can learn something, even from the 
most ignorant, if I take to them kindly, and do 
not offend their pride. The poor are as proud, 
after their own fashion, as the rich ; and the most 
degraded of men knows that he belongs to the 
aristocracy of nature, and that, like Alexander 
Selkirk, in Cowper's well-known poem, he is " lord 
of the fowl and the brute." He who hath sixpence 
is king, to the extent of sixpence, says Emerson; 
and a man is a man, and among the noblest of 
animals, even when he is taken at his worst. 

Though the rich may not know it or wish it, 
there is almost as great a distinction of " caste " in 
England as there is in India. It is something more 
than money that divides the rich from the poor, 
and the poor from the rich; and something else 



INTRODUCTORY. 3 

than money or education — or the absence of one or 
both — that separates trades from each other, or one 
class of work-people from another ; and it is exceed- 
ingly difficult for one whose dress, manners, and 
conversation mark him as belonging to the profes- 
sional, commercial, or gentlemanly classes to esta- 
blish friendly and intimate relations with the pea- 
santry and lower orders of labourers, or to get at 
the secrets of their moral and intellectual life. To 
call upon poor working people in their homes, sug- 
gests to them that you have a ' ' mission " — religious 
or otherwise — to reform or lecture them, and they 
immediately — whether male or female — put on a 
mental armour to defy you. They do not like to be 
preached at, or lectured, or patronised, by " unco' 
guid " or " rigidly righteous " people ; and though 
they will most likely take your money if you offer 
it, you will get but little insight into their mode of 
life or habits of thought, if you talk to them for a 
twelvemonth. They are on their guard against 
you, and will not admit you into their confidence, 
strive as hard as you may. If you sit with them 
in their beerhouses, they discover at a glance, in 
whatever way you may have dressed yourself, that 
you are not one of them ; and they look upon you 
as a flock of sheep might look upon a wolf, or a 
congregation of crows upon an alien magpie, who 
had obtruded into their clan or companionship. But 



4 INTRODUCTORY. 

when you meet with them on the country roads and 
tramp along with them for miles, not having forced 
yourself upon their company, but- offering it or 
accepting it, as from man to man, you may often 
make the acquaintance of some very excellent people, 
from whom you can sometimes learn more than they 
can learn from you. If they have not the know- 
ledge of books — and even in this respect some of 
them are by no means ignorant — they have the 
knowledge of things : and if they look upon man 
and nature, fate and circumstance, and on the rights 
and wrongs of the poor, with eyes different from 
yours, and, perhaps, from a totally opposite point 
of view, you acquire a new kind of experience, and, 
it may be, learn something of the previously unsus- 
pected fires and forces that lie smouldering and 
latent in the hearts of the multitude, of which our 
lawgivers are often wholly unaware, and which they 
would not, perhaps, credit on any authority but 
that of their own experience. "It maybe some 
entertainment," says Eobert Burns, in a letter to 
his friend Robert Riddel, of Glenriddel, " to a curious 
observer of human nature to see how a ploughman 
thinks and feels under the pressure of love, ambi- 
tion, anxiety, and grief, with like cares and passions, 
which, however diversified by the modes and man- 
ners of life, operate, I believe, pretty much alike on 
all the species." Agreeing with Robert Burns in 



INTRODUCTORY. 5 

this particular, not only as regards ploughmen, but 
labouring men of every description, I never neglect 
an opportunity to exchange ideas with them, and to 
inquire how and on what they live 5 what opinions 
they form of their own class, and of the classes 
above and below them ; what notions, if any, they 
have of the government of their own or other coun- 
tries ; what are their enjoyments, their sorrows, their 
prejudices ; whether they attend church or chapel ; 
and what are their ideas of the divine government 
of the world, and their hopes, if they have any, of a 
hereafter. 






THE ROAD MENDER. 

1STE of the most respectable men I know, 
and whose acquaintance I made upon 
the highway where he does his daily 
work, is employed to keep three miles 
of the public road in order. The road winds through 
a beautiful country, and need not be more parti- 
cularly specified, lest my good friend the labourer 
should be pointed out too particularly to the notice 
of the public of his own neighbourhood. He bears 
an aristocratic name, and were he dressed in the 
garb of a gentleman would present a distinguished 
if not an aristocratic appearance. Pass him when I 
will, he is always at his work. He labours as if he 
liked his employment ; he never loiters, or dozes, or 
takes unfair advantage of his paymaster to " scamp" 
the job in hand. He clears the pathway from weeds, 
trims the hedges, sees that the water-courses are 
clear, looks to the drains, scrapes the horse manure 
into little heaps by the roadside to be carted away 



THE BO AD MENDER. 7 

by the agencies appointed for the purpose ; levels 
the roadway wherever it gets worn into holes or 
ruts, by shovelling in the necessary amount of mac- 
adam ; and every day has enough to occupy him in 
all these matters, and fill up the requisite number 
of hours that he is bound to labour. He has got, 
it seems, to be very much attached to his three 
miles of woodland road. He knows every tree on 
either side, and how old it is ; he can point out 
those that are the favourite haunts of the squirrel 
and the dormouse ; and he is acquainted with the 
common but not with the botanical names of all the 
hedge flowers and herbs in his district. He is close 
upon sixty years of age, but looks older, and is 
seldom to be seen without his short pipe in his 
mouth, unless when he is spoken to. 

" What wages do you earn, Mr. Stanley ? " I one 
day asked him. Stanley is not his name, but he 
has one quite as aristocratic. 

" Two shillings a day." 

" You have a wife and family ? " 

u A wife and five children." 

" Are any of the children old enough to earn 
anything ? " 

" Not one. The oldest is only ten." 

' ( And how can you feed them all, on two shillings 
a day?" 

' ' God knows," he replied. " I don't. The wife 



8 THE ROAD MENDER. 

manages somehow to get them bread and potatoes, 
though scarcely enough, and a little tea." 

« No meat?" 

" Meat ! Well, we sometimes get a little bit of 
rusty bacon, just to grease the potatoes with ; bacon 
that shopkeepers, or clerks, or servant girls would 
not look at, but which we manage to relish. I sup- 
pose it is because we are hungry. " 

" Is the Sunday dinner no better than the week 
day one ? " 

' c Well, yes, we buy the offal, as the butchers call 
it, when it is cheap, as it generally is in the hot 
weather when it will not keep long." 

" What do you mean by offal ? " 

" I mean the heart, liver, and entrails. The wife 
can cook a little, and chops up these things with 
onions and salt, to make them savoury, and hide 
the taste of putrefaction when the things are cheap 
and not over fresh. When I was a young man, I 
did not much mind the stale flavour. I had a 
stomach and an appetite like an ostrich then \ but 
now that I am growing old, I am getting particular, 
and prefer cheese to meat. Bread and cheese and 
onions is not bad fare, after all, if a man gets enough 
of it." 

a I see you manage to spare a little out of your 
earnings for tobacco. Surely you could do without 
that ? " 



THE ROAD MENDER. 9 

e ' I cannot do without ' baccy/ but I spend very 
little — next to nothing, I may say — on the article. 
I find almost all that I need, upon the road. Gen- 
tlemen who smoke throw away the cigar ends, and 
I pick up sufficient during the day, to cut or 
untwist, to supply my pipe. If you stopped my 
' baccy ' I should lose the best friend I have in the 
world — next to my wife." 

"You seem a strong man. Do you drink beer ?" 

" I am a strong man, thank God ; and I hope 
there is no harm in liking a glass of good ale or 
beer?" 

" Not in the least. I know I like it, if it be good, 
and shall have much pleasure in treating you to a 
pint." 

" Thank you kindly. I never begged a glass of 
beer in my life, and would scorn to do it, but I 
never refused one if offered. People are pretty good 
to me, and I get two or three pints in a week, 
or more than that, from acquaintances on the 
road. But the beer gets awfully bad now-a-days. 
The publicans are not honest. They put water in 
their beer first, and that makes it weak ; and then 
they put drugs into it, to make it strong again. I 
think such men ought to be severely punished. It's 
worse than poaching, in my opinion." 

' l And in mine, too ; and if I could have my way, 
I would make such an example of some of the 



10 THE ROAD MENDER. 

poisoners of the poor man's beer, as would create a 
talk in the world." 

"Yes, sir, it's cruel; and the more cruel because 
it is the poor, who can't help themselves, who are 
made to suffer." 

" Do you earn daily wages all the year round ? " 

" No. Whenever there is a hard frost, or the 
snow lies upon the ground, I have to shut up. In 
such times I earn nothing, though they are just 
the times when a man requires most. Coals are 
dear, but we get them at half price at a place in the 
village, where the gentry subscribe to let us have 
them. And then I have the privilege of gathering 
sticks and windfalls, which helps a little." 

' c And when you are too old to work, what then V 
I asked suggestively. 

"Well, there is first of all, the workhouse, and 
after that, the grave. If it were not for the work- 
house, I sometimes think that the squires and great 
people would not have such a nice time of it in this 
world, as they have. I don't want to go there, how- 
ever. I should like to work on, and earn my wage 
to the last. England's a poor place for such as I 
am, at the best. There are too many of us. That's 
the truth." 

' ' You can read ? " 

" Ay, well enough ; and I like reading, too, espe- 
cially the newspapers." 



TEE ROAD MENDER. 11 

" Do you take in a penny paper ?" 

" No, indeed, but I borrow one, when it's a week 
old, from the butcher. I get the news stale, as I 
do my victuals, but contrive to learn what is going 
on in the world. " 

" Do you read in the evening, after your work is 
done?" 

" Well, sometimes ;- — not always. I like to have 
a talk with people, and hear the news of the place. 
Sunday's my day for reading." 

' ( Do you attend church ? " 

"Not often, for I fall asleep, and I don't like to 
set a bad example — and to be nudged by somebody 
near me as if I was committing a sin. Besides, I 
snore sometimes. I wish I could keep awake at 
church, but I can't. So I stay away and read the 
newspaper, and sometimes lie in bed half the day, 
and bless it as a day of rest." 

({ Do you study the politics in the papers V 

"I don't care much about politics. I have no 
vote. Fm nobody. But if I had a vote, Fd vote 
for any gentleman who'd abolish the game laws, and 
punish the wretches who put drugs into the beer. 
And I should like to vote for any one who'd bring 
beef or mutton from Australia or South America, so 
that I could get meat instead of offal, and live half 
as well as my lord's footman. But this won't be in 
my time, I suppose ! " 



12 THE BO AD MENDER. 

"I'm afraid not, though it's not impossible. 
There's food enough in the world for all mankind, 
if we could but bring the food to the mouths that 
require it. Do none of your children go to school?" 

' ( Yes, the two eldest, boys of nine and ten, go 
to school in the winter; but in the summer they get 
a job now and then as crow boys and sparrow boys, 
to frighten the birds from the corn, and earn a few 
shillings to buy clothes with. They'll be able to 
read and write, and do a little cyphering, I sup- 
pose, by the time they are fourteen or fifteen.'" 

" And your own clothes ; how do you manage ? " 

" Well, clothes last a good while with care and 
mending". I've got the suit I was married in, and 
it looks pretty good still. Boots are the most 
expensive article I have to buy. The wife manages ; 
and she is a clever woman. She goes out charing 
sometimes, and gets herself a little bit of finery, and 
a few ribbons. Lord love her ! She deserves them. 
And you see I am a sober man, and waste no money 
in drink, though, as I said, I like my beer, and I 
like it good, and would like to have the pillory set 
up once more in our parish. Wouldn't I pelt some 
people if they got there ! " 

I took care that the road-mender had some good 
beer that day — Bass's bottled — which he highly 
relished. He is, it will be seen, a very favourable 
specimen of the English peasantry — an honest, 



TEE BO AD MENDER. 13 

hard-working, cheerful, but hopeless man ; born to 
be a drudge, eking out his life with the aid of 
charitable coals and chance kindnesses; one who 
has but little idea of, or care for, the promises of 
religion — a good man in his way, but practically as 
much a heathen as his compeers in Greece in the 
days of Plato. He harbours no resentment against, 
and entertains no jealousy of, his superiors in 
station and worldly wealth, and speaks ill of nobody 
with the sole exception of the adulterators of his 
beer. The portrait is from the life ; and were there 
no worse or more ignorant people in England than 
he, England would be a better place than it is for the 
labouring classes. 





HAPPY JACK. 




HY are you called Happy Jack?" in- 
quired I of a very worthy man of my 
acquaintance, who came to my garden 
to show me some rare plants, which he 
thought I would purchase. He was a man of the 
people ; a man in a fustian jacket, with good thick 
substantial shoes on his feet ; a wide-awake on his 
head ; a blackthorn walking-stick in his hand ; a 
wallet at his back ; and a short black pipe in his 
mouth. He slowly and deliberately removed his 
pipe to answer me. 

" The people all calls me Happy Jack," he said. 
<c It seems to please them, and doesn't do me any 
harm. But my name, as you may have perhaps 
heard, is not Jack or Tom either, but Giles ; and a 
very good name too, at least I knows no harm of it. 
But Jack somehow or other stands to being honest 
and handy ; and that's why they call sailors Jacks, 
I suppose. And a Jack-of-all-Trades means a clever 



EAPPY JACK 15 

chap as can turn his hand to anything. And when 
people calls me Happy Jack, I suppose they mean 
it as a compliment ; and as the world goes, I am 
happy enough. Anyhow I never complain. I make 
a pretty fair living ; and I don't mind telling you, 
that I've laid by a little bit of money in the savings 
bank, and shan't come upon the union if I grow 
ever so old and worn out. The secret of my happi- 
ness — if I be's happy — and I don't deny it alto- 
gether, though I might, are a good wife, a good 
appetite, a good conscience, and a business as I likes 
and sticks to ; and which, if I were proud, which I 
ain't, I might call a perfession. I would not change 
it for ne'er another business in the world." 

And hereupon he put his pipe into his mouth 
again, drew several long-drawn satisfactory whiffs, 
and meditated. 

I knew Giles's business well enough, and knew 
also that he took a pleasure in it; as I took a 
pleasure sometimes in hearing him talk about it. 
Giles, whom I shall call Happy Jack, as his peers 
and comrades call him, as more descriptive of his 
character than his legal and baptismal cognomen, is a 
wandering herbalist, or gatherer of simples, and some- 
what of a physician in his humble fashion among the 
poorer order of farm-labourers and cottagers. He 
is a diligent student of botany — the botany of the 
meadow, the garden and the roadside ; with Nature 



16 HAPPY JACK 

for his first great teacher, and old Nicholas Culpeper, 
student in physic and astrology, for his guide and 
universal referee. Like Shakespeare's Father 
Laurence, in " Eomeo and Juliet," he knows well 
how to fill his osier basket — 

With baleful weeds and precious juiced flowers, 

and can as thoroughly as that worthy friar, un- 
derstand — 

How mickle is the powerful grace that lies 
In plants and herbs. 

An ancient edition of Culpeper, entitled "The 
Complete Herbal" (with nearly four hundred medi- 
cines made from English herbs, physically applied 
to the cure of all disorders incident to man, with 
rules for compounding them; also directions for 
making syrups, ointments, &c. &c. &c, and bearing 
for its motto on the frontispiece the Bible text,. 
c ' And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is 
in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth 
out of the wall ") is the constant companion of Jack's 
wanderings. A well-thumbed, greasy, time-stained, 
dog's-eared book it is ; and annotated by hundreds, 
of illegible marks ; — not illegible, however, to Jack, 
though looking very like Egyptian hieroglyphics to 
all eyes but his own. In the pursuit of herbs, such 
as the herbalists sell in most of the great towns and 
cities of England, which the homoeopathic chemists 



HAPPY JACK. 17 

will sometimes purchase, to re vend in infinitesimal 
doses, which hospitals require for plasters and poul- 
tices; and which poor women of the old school are 
fond of using as infallible nostrums for their own 
ailments, and those of their husbands and children. 
Jack makes regular circuits into the midland, 
southern, eastern, and western counties of England ; 
from Margate to the Land's End in one direction, 
and from Warwick to Southampton and Portsmouth 
in another. A sturdy man he was when I first 
knew him, about sixty years of age, though as hale 
and hearty as if he had been but forty, and with an 
appetite, never very small, that had been kept large 
by fresh air, daily exercise, and a mind at ease. 
He is an educated man in everything except the 
education of books — the great Culpeper's alone ex- 
cepted ; and able to discourse on many things 
hidden from the philosophy of people who, were 
they brought into juxta-position with him, might 
consider themselves to be very much his supe- 
riors. 

" What simples are most in request, now-a-days ? " 
I once inquired of him. 

" Well, I can't say, exactly/' he replied ; li but I 
think there Las of late been more call for henbane, 
deadly nightshade, and briony, than there used to 
be. The homoeopathic doctors" — such he called 
them — " makes great use of all these herbs, and so 

c 



18 HAPPY JAGK. 

does the other doctors too, I believe. Mighty useful 
herbs they be, every one on 'em." 

"All poisons V 3 I said. 

" Pisons ! " he said, emphatically. I knew he 
would take exception to the word, and used it of 
malice prepense, that I might draw him out the 
more strongly. Ci Pisons ! " he repeated. " There are 
no positive pisons in the world, and everything is a 
pison if you don't know how to use it. Beef is pison 
if you eat nothing else for breakfast, dinner, and 
supper; and bread is pison, and taters uncommon 
pisonous. Henbane is pison, ne'er a doubt, if you 
swallow an improper dose of it; and so is deadly 
nightshade ; it has a flower uncommon like the 
flower of the tater ; and white briony — one of the 
prettiest and handsomest things as grows, with 
fingers as fine as a lady's — has a root as well as a 
berry, as is good for more ailments than I can count 
on my fingers. Pisons ! Look here ! " he said, 
stretching his hand towards the meadows and the 
woods beyond them — " there's not a herb, or flower, 
or weed, if there be anything as grows as deserves 
to be called a weed, that you could pluck in a long 
summer's day, as is not good for summut or other. 
Only men, as a rule, are so ignorant! The very 
dogs and cats knows better than some men; and 
when they are unwell after eatin' too much stuff, 
which men has given them, and as is not good for 



HAPPY JAOK. 19 

them, they goes to the herbs appointed by God 
Almighty, and eats ''em, to purge out the ill- 
humours. And the rooks and the crows too, after 
they have gorged 'emselves with worms and grubs, 
knows where to go for physic, and eats nettle-seeds 
or yew-berries. They can't afford to pay doctors, 
and they doctors 'emselves, as men might do, if 
they looked into Culpeper as much as they ought. 
I don't like to hear the plants and herbs called 
pisons and weeds. There's no such thing as a real 
pison. Milk is pison if, instead of drinking it, you 
cuts a vein open and pours a drop or two in. Some 
herbs are pison outwardly, and some are pison 
in'ardly. But not one as grows — I don't care what 
the doctors say — is pisonous in itself, if you knows 
how to use it, and the right quantity to take. 
Pisons indeed ! I don't believe, wise as people think 
'emselves in our day, with their steam-engines and 
their telegraphs, and all the rest of the new-fangled 
contrivances as we hear on every day of our lives — 
that we have found out half the virtues of the 
plants — no, nor a tenth part of 'em. It's my belief 
that Nebuchadnezzar, when he ate grass, took a 
physic as was good for him, and that there is a great 
deal more virtue in grass than the world knows on, 
with all its wisdom. For of all "herbs," is not 
grass called in Scripture the herb of the field, as if 
it was, which I sometimes think it is, the best as 



20 HAPPY JACK. 

well as the commonest of all the herbs ? I've many 
a time wished, when I've seen a dog a eatin' on it, 
as I could ax him what he was a doin' it for. Of 
course I can ax the dog the question, but by wuss 
luck I can't get his answer. The only fault in old 
Culpeper as ever I could find is, as he says nothing 
about grass. If I was a scholard and could write 
as well as him, or only half as well for the matter of 
that, I'd write about grass myself. I knows> be- 
cause I tried, that what the people calls^ mountain- 
grass is a certain cure for the rheumatics ; that is 
to say, the tea or broth made of it by boiling. And 
it's my opinion that there isn't any kind of grass as 
isn't good for man as well as beast, only, as I said 
before, men are, for the most part, such fools, and 
has to be taught what the beasts knows without 
teaching. Could any one believe now," continued 
Jack, who had warmed with his subject, and whom 
I would not have interrupted on any account, except 
by a word of stimulation — ' ( as any men of laming 
and eddication could have been such hasses — I beg 
the hasses' pardon — as the three railway gents, that 
I read of last week in the newspapers, who got eating 
the roots of deadly nightshade, and thought they were 
wild carrots ? A dog, now, would have had more 
sense. And one of the precious simpletons died of 
his carrots in an hour or two ! I don't like to say it 
sarved him right ! What's the good of so much 



HAPPY JACK 21 

book laming if a fellow doesn't know a carrot when 
he sees it ? It wasn't the root that killed the poor 
silly creature, but his own stupidity : for deadly 
nightshade is one of the finest physics in all the 
world, as any common doctor knows, let alone the 
herbalist." 

" Have you any particular favourite of your own 
among the simples you gather ; any one more 
valuable than the rest in your opinion, and of a 
greater benefit to mankind ? " 

" Well, I can't tell ! So many on 'em ' deserve 
honourable mention/ as they used to say of things 
sent to the Great Exhibition, that I can't fix upon 
any one in particular. Now, there's poppy, for 
instance. What a blessing poppy is, let alone its 
juice in the shape of lodnum, which brings the 
blessed sleep to the weary eyes and brain of many a 
sick man and woman as couldn't get a wink without 
it ; but as a relief to swelling and inflammation of 
every kind. There's the common field poppy, 
now," and Jack stooped to gather one as he spoke, 
" which some folks calls the corn rose ; — it is good 
for more things than causing sleep. Hear what 
old Culpeper says about it. I have it all by heart. 
1 The wild poppy, or corn rose, is good to prevent the 
falling sickness. The syrup made with the flowers 
is with good effect given to those that have the 
pleurisy ; and the dried flowers also, either boiled 



22 HAPPY JAGK. 

in water, or made into powder, and drank, either in 
the distilled water of them, or some other drink, 
worketh the like effect. The distilled water of the 
Sowers is held to be of much good nse against sur- 
feits, being drunk evening and morning. It is 
more cooling than any of the other poppies, and 
effectual in hot agues, frenzies, and other inflamma- 
tions, inward or outward/ C{ Ah ! " added Jack, 
in corroboration of what his great master had said, 
" poppy's quite as good in its way as the corn that 
it grows among ; though the farmers doesn't know 
it. Then, again, there's chick-weed and groundsel, 
that the London people take such mighty cartloads 
of every week to feed their singing birds with, but 
which are quite as good for men or women as for 
goldfinches and canaries." 

I suppose that I looked doubtful on this point, 
for Jack went on with renewed earnestness : " I 
tell you chickweed and groundsel is good for many 
kinds of sickness. I knows it, and Culpeper says 
it ; and surely he knowed. ( Chickweed,' he says, 
1 is a fine, soft, pleasing herb, born under the 
dominion of the moon/ " 

" Why of the moon ? " I inquired. 

" Every plant as grows," said Jack, with as 
much gravity as a judge, " grows under the in- 
fluence of the sun, or the moon, or its own particular 
planet. That's positive ! Many grows under Venus, 



HAPPY JACK. 23 

many under Mars, and many under Saturn. What 
plant was I talking on ? Chickweed. Yes ! Chick- 
weed belongs to the moon. And, as you might, 
perhaps, not believe me, hear what Culpeper says : — 
' This herb bruised, or the juice applied with cloths 
or sponges dipped therein, to the region of the 
liver, doth wonderfully temperate the inflamma- 
tion thereof. It is effectual for all swellings and 
imposthumes ; for all redness in the face, wheals, 
pushes, itches, and scabs. The juice, either simply 
used, and boiled with hog's lard, and applied to the 
part, helpeth cramps, convulsions, and palsy. The 
juice or distilled water is of much good use for all heats 
and redness in the eyes, to drop some thereof into 
them. It is good, also, in virulent sores and ulcers of 
the leg and other parts of the body. The leaves boiled 
with marsh-mallows and made into a poultice, with 
fenugreek and linseed, helpeth the sinews when they 
are shrunk by cramp or otherwise.' That's what 
Culpeper says of chickweed, which you may see is 
not sent by a kind Providence for the birds only. 
And e grunsel ' (groundsel) is just as good, if not 
better ; for grunsel is under the dominion of Venus. 
I shan't tell you what I think of it, 'cause you 
might think I was a exaggerating, or that I was a 
drawin' on my fancy, which I assure you I never 
does in the matter of any plant, big or little, 
common or uncommon. Culpeper was in love with 



24 HAPPY JACK. 

grunsel, I do believe. He says that this herb 
is Venus's masterpiece, and f is as gallant and 
universal a remedy for all diseases coming of heat, 
in whatever part of the body they may be, as any 
that the sun shines upon. It is very safe and 
friendly to the body of man ; yet causeth vomiting 
if the stomach be affected, if not, purging, which it 
doth with more gentleness than might be expected.' 
Old Culpeper didn't like the doctors — they got 
the guineas out of people in his time, as they do 
in ours, a vast deal too easily. c Lay by your 
learned Latin receipts,' he says ; about c so many 
grains of senna, and scammony, and colocynth, and 
crocus metallora' — whatever that may mean — f and 
grunsel alone in a syrup, or distilled water, shall do' 
the deed for you, in all hot diseases, speedily 
and safely. Nor is this all ; it is excellent for 
jaundice, the cholic, sciatica, and the gravel.' In 
short," added Jack, " it's about the best physic as 
goes." 

I plucked a nettle as Jack concluded, with a 
gloved hand, Men entendu, and asked him, " Has 
this vile thing any virtue ? " 

' ' Vile thing ! " he responded indignantly. " Why 
vile ? it is one of the best plants as grows ; a prime 
gift of God to poor ungrateful human kind. Call a 
nettle vile ! But you don't mean it — I know you 
don't ! Bless your heart ! the nettle — you may 



HAPPY JACK. 25 

discover it in the dark, as old Culpeper says — is 
good for scores of diseases. Mars is the lord of it ; 
for the nettle, like Mars, is fiery. Nettle broth 
is good for shortness of breath, and the asthma. 
Look into Culpeper and see if it isn't good also for 
pleurisy and sore throat ; good for the gravel ; 
good for worms in children ; and as I have heerd 
say, and believe, good for the sting of adders 
and pisonous snakes; and the bite of mad dogs. 
Nettles ! why we can make beer of 'em, and very 
good beer too." 

I think Jack would have gone on for an hour 
or more about the nettles — had I not stopped to 
pluck a daisy as he finished his laudation, and, 
offering it to him, asked if there were any medicinal 
properties in that, and under what planet he 
supposed daisies to be born ? 

" Suppose them to be born ? " he replied, <( I know 
them to be born under Yenus. Culpeper says so. 
That's enough for me. As for the virtues of the 
daisy, it has lots an' lots. Its juice distilled is good 
for the liver complaint. For ulcers in the gums, 
the lips, or the tongue, it is the best thing in the 
world. But look to Culpeper if you want to know 
more ; all I say is, that its leaves and flowers, as well 
as its juice, is good for inflammations and swellings, 
and eases the pains of gout, rheumatism, and sciatica. 
I gather cart-loads of daisies every year and sells 'em ; 



26 HAPPY JACK 

and many a poor old hedger and ditcher, or his poor 
old wife, troubled with the rheumatics, can get as good 
a remedy for their ailment, for a pennorth o' daisies, 
as they could have got from the queen's own doctor, 
if they had paid him — which they could not do, 
poor souls ! — a guinea fifty times over. And how 
kind and bountiful God Almighty is," said Jack, 
with a feeling of real piety, surging up in his simple 
heart, u to make all the good things of this world so 
common. Fresh air now ! what a good physic and 
medicine is that ! And free to the poorest creature 
as crawls, if he will only crawl out from his hole and 
condescend to breathe it. And sunshine ! What is 
so good as sunshine ? I have often thought to my- 
self, that if I had the value in my pocket of one day 
of sunshine in harvest time, that I should be the 
richest man in all the universal world ! Not that I 
wants to be the richest man in the world, or rich at 
all — for that matter. For if I was rich, could I eat 
my dinner with a better appetite than I do now ? 
And sleep better o' nights ? And have more plea- 
sure in my walks ? ~Not that I objects to a little bit 
of money, mind ye, by no means. But when I hears 
of people scrapin', and scraping and scrapin' up 
money, and cheatm' other people so as they may 
scrape deeper and pile up higher, and never enjoym* 
themselves a bit, or even so much as laughin' except 
when they have swindled or cheated somebody, I 



HAPPY JACK 27 

thinks as money may be bought too dear, and that 
them's the happiest folks, who takes a little pleasure 
as they goes, doesn't cheat nobody, and thinks more 
of the sunshine out o' doors, at least once in a way, 
than they does of a good bargain.-" 

"Well, Jack," I said, "you enjoy yourself, any 
how. You always seem happy, and I know you are 
strong." 

" Well," he replied, (e it's a grand thing to enjoy 
your business if it be a innocent one. And mine is 
innocent, and I likes it. Lord, love ye ! I would 
not be a tailor, a carpenter, a shoe-maker, or a shop- 
keeper, for all the money the queen could offer me. 
I love the open air, the road-side, the path through 
the woods and meadows, or by the river. I love to 
hear the birds a-singing, and to see the herbs and 
plants a-growing; and to feel at the same time that 
they are all a-growing- for me, and that I knows 
how to use 'em, and make a decent and a honour- 
able living out of 'em. And then you see, I'm 
different from a farmer. He has to sow afore he 
can reap. I never sows, and I always reaps. The 
wind and the birds sows the seeds for me, and they 
grows without my care and for my benefit ; the rain 
soaks 'em and the sun ripens 'em, and all for me, 
because I knows what they are, what they can do, 
and where I can look for 'em when I wants 'em." 

- ' You told me," I said, " that you made a good 



28 HAPPY JACK. 

living by this business of gathering and selling 
simples. Would you think it rude in me if I asked 
you how much you earn on the average in a week, 
or whether from year's end to year's end you are as 
well paid as a gardener or a farm-labourer V* 

" There's ne'er a gardener or farm-labourer in all 
England as I would change places with/' answered 
Jack, somewhat contemptuously. " Farm-labourers 
get ten or twelve shillings a week, and gardeners 
eighteen or twenty and their beer. If I did not 
earn three, times as much as any farm-labourer, or, 
at least, twice as much as any gardener as ever 
mowed a lawn, or dug a potato, I should think my 
business was a-going to the dogs. Farm-labourers, 
poor things, knows very little, and gardeners doesn't 
know much; and it stands to reason, as I knows 
more than they, that I should make a better living 
than they do. Howsomever, that's neither here nor 
there. I like my business, and my business likes 
me ; and I wouldn't change it — no, not to be Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury ! " 

Good bye, Happy Jack ! Long may you flourish I 
You deserve your name ! 




THE LANGUAGE OF ANIMALS. 

HO has not read the Arabian Nights' 
Entertainments ? I pity the man or 
woman, if any such there be, who has 
not ; or, if I do not pity them, I envy 
the treat in store for them, if they will turn from the 
error of their ways, and read the fascinating book 
from beginning to end. Among the stories which 
first fixes the attention of most people is that of the 
merchant who understood the language of animals. 
And a delightful story it is. In ".^Esop's Fables," also, 
where the beasts and the birds talk to each other and 
to mankind, no reader, who has a proper faith in what 
he reads, is in the least degree surprised at the saga- 
city which the animals display and put into the most 
natural language imaginable. The fox did say the 
grapes were sour ; the wolf did fix an unconscionable 
quarrel upon the poor little lamb which he wanted 
to devour, and the lion did really express to the 
man his candid opinion upon the favouritism of por- 



30 TEE LANGUAGE 

trait-painting. At all events, the youthful imagi- 
nation sees no absurdity in the idea. This brings 
me to my subject — Is fable entirely wrong in these 
little matters, and have not all animals a language 
of their own ? Have not birds a language which 
other birds understand ? and insects ? and, for that 
matter, fishes ? In the pride of our superior know- 
ledge, we assert of ourselves that Man is the only 
animal who kindles a fire, cooks food, makes clothes,, 
and is endowed with the faculty of articulate speech. 
While granting our own monopoly of fire-making, 
cookery, and tailoring, are we quite sure that we 
do not arrogate to ourselves a little too much supe- 
riority when we claim that to us alone is accorded 
the glorious privilege of language ? Philosophers 
are very dogmatic on the subject. u However 
much," says Professor Max Muller, "the frontiers 
of the animal kingdom have been pushed forward, 
so that at one time the line of demarcation between 
animal and man seemed to depend on a mere fold 
of the brain, there is one barrier which no one has 
yet ventured to touch — the barrier of language." 
The professor proceeds to quote Lord Monboddo 
and John Locke. The first says that "As yet no 
animal has been discovered in the possession of lan- 
guage, not even the beaver, who of all the animals 
we know, that are not like the ourang-outang, of 
our own species, comes nearest to us in sagacity." 



OF ANIMALS. 31 

Locke says, " The power of abstracting is not at all 
in brutes ; and . the having of general ideas is that 
which puts a perfect distinction between man and 
brutes. For it is evident we observe no footsteps 
in these of making use of general signs for universal 
ideas ; from which we have reason to imagine that 
they have not the faculty of abstracting or making 
general ideas, since they have no use of words or of 
other general signs." Are not these philosophers 
a little too confident ? 

We know that there are many creatures on the 
earth which are utterly unconscious of the existence 
of man ; and we might, if we were not too proud, 
ask ourselves, in like manner, if there may not be 
many things in the animal creation of which man is 
necessarily unconscious. If I walk through the 
woods on a bright summer's day, or sit under the 
oaken or beech en shadows, I am conscious of a tide 
and tremor of life around me. I hear the birds 
singing, twittering, and chattering, each species with 
its own peculiar note. I hear the bees and the flies 
buzzing with more or less vigour, pertinacity, and 
volume of sound ; while a faint echo comes from the 
distant pastures of the bleating of sheep, the lowing 
of cattle, the barking of shepherds' dogs, and the 
lusty crowing of the cocks in the farm-yard. I ask 
myself whether all these various sounds may not be 
as many languages, perfectly intelligible to the 



32 TEE LANGUAGE 

creatures which speak them to each other, though 
unintelligible to me. I know that some animals — the 
dog especially — understand many words that I em- 
ploy, if I speak emphatically, and that my own dog 
will do what I tell him ; but, if I do not understand 
what one dog says to another, whose fault is it, mine 
or the dog's ? Man may doubtless claim that he has 
a larger vocabulary than the inferior creation. He 
has wants more numerous, ideas more abundant ; 
hopes, fears, recollections, and aspirations, un- 
known perhaps to their limited intelligence, and 
must consequently have a language more copious 
than theirs. Language keeps pace with knowledge, 
intelligence, and imagination. A Shakespeare may 
require fourteen thousand words to express all his 
thoughts, and tell all his marvellous stories; a 
scientific writer, obliged to be accurate, may re- 
quire a few thousand more ; a modern gentleman, 
of average education, may manage to express all his 
wants, wishes, and emotions, and carry on the usual 
intercourse of life and society, with four thousand ; 
while an ordinary peasant in some of our rural dis- 
tricts sometimes gets on satisfactorily to himself, his 
family, and his associates, with about five hundred, 
and can manage to transact all his business with his 
horse in half-a-dozen. And as it does not follow 
that we can truly call such a peasant a man without 
a language, even when speaking to his horse, neither 



OF ANIMALS. 33 

does it follow in the case of a quadruped, that may 
have but four or five, or even but one word or sound 
to express its meaning, that such quadruped is with- 
out a language which its fellow- quadrupeds may 
understand ? A single sound, with a rising or a 
falling accent, or a stronger or weaker emphasis, 
may express different meanings ; and the same 
sound, repeated, twice, thrice, or four times, with 
the rising or the falling accent at the first, second, 
third, or fourth repetition, may contain a whole 
vocabulary for the simple creatures who emit and 
understand the sound, and whose wants and emo- 
tions are as circumscribed as their speech. 

Professor Max Miiller supplies us with an illus- 
tration in point. He says that in the Chinese, 
the Annamitic, and likewise in the Siamese and 
Burmese languages, one single sound does duty in 
this way for a great variety of meanings. " Thus," 
he says, t( in Annamitic, c ha, pronounced with the 
grave accent, means a lady or an ancestor ; pro- 
nounced with a sharp accent, it means the favourite 
of a prince ; pronounced with the semi-grave accent, 
it means what has been thrown away ; pronounced 
with the grave circumflex, it means what is left of 
a fruit after the juice has been squeezed out ; pro- 
nounced with no accent, it means three ; pronounced 
with the ascending or interrogative accent, it means 
a box on the ear. Thus, "Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba" is 

D 



34 THE LANGUAGE 

said to mean, if properly pronounced, e Three ladies 
gave a box on the ear to the favourite of the 
prince.' " 

In our own and in several European languages 
identical sounds have various meanings ; the English 
" box " being one example, and the French " sang," 
" s'en," " sans," " sent," " cent " another. If we 
consider this subject without a prejudice, may we 
not see reason to think that the " Bow ! wow ! 
wow ! " of our estimable friend the dog, may be 
susceptible of a great variety of meanings, according 
to the tone and accentuation he gives to those 
fundamental words or syllables of his language, or 
the number of repetitions either of the " boiv " or 
the "wow?" Sometimes, when a dog barks, he will 
omit the C( boiv" altogether, and say, (i wow ! wow ! 
wowl" very sharply and rapidly; and it can be 
scarcely supposed that so very intelligent a creature 
has no reason for this little change in its customary 
phraseology. Mr. Max Miiller positively states that 
" no animal thinks, and no animal speaks, except 
man." Every one who has made a friend of an 
animal — and there are few who have not — must 
dispute the first part of this assertion. When a 
dog is presented with a bone after he has had his 
dinner and satisfied his hunger, he thinks the bone 
is too good to be rejected, and it would be wise in 
him to put it into a place of safety, to be ready 



OF ANIMALS. 35 

when required, just as a man puts his money in the 
bank. Accordingly, he takes his opportunity to go 
into the garden and bury it; and, if watched in 
the process, will dig it up again with his nose, and 
carry it off to a safer spot. Is not this thinking ? 
When I put on my hat and overcoat, and take my 
walking stick from its accustomed place in the hall, 
my dog thinks, and speedily knows, that I am 
going out ; and very plainly asks me, not only by 
the sudden sparkling of his expressive eyes and the 
wagging of his equally expressive tail, but by a 
succession of joyous barks and yelps, whether I 
mean to take him along with me ; and, if I refuse 
the request, very plainly expresses his sorrow for 
my decision. 

Mr. Max Muller says elsewhere in his lecture, 
that " language and thought are inseparable." If 
this statement be correct, it follows from his own 
showing, that if we can prove the possession of a 
faculty for thinking in the members of the inferior 
creation, we must admit that they may possess a 
language which they may thoroughly understand, 
and which may be quite sufficient for the expres- 
sion of their limited ideas. It is difficult to be- 
lieve that the crow has not two or three, and the 
nightingale at least a dozen notes in its voice, and 
that these notes may not, in their interchange, re- 
iteration, and succession, express ideas with which 



36 THE LANGUAGE 

crows are familiar, and whole poems or histories, 
such as nightingales love to tell and repeat to one 
another; and that any one of the many notes in 
the sweet song of the skylark may not, according 
to its accentuation, or even to its place in the 
gamut, express as many shades of meaning as the 
Annamitic "ba" of which Mr. Max Miiller dis- 
courses. That we cannot understand the language 
is no proof that it is not a language ; for, if it were, 
the nations of the earth might mutually accuse each 
other of being as speechless as the brutes. It is 
quite as difficult for the uneducated and untrained 
ear — say, of an Englishman — to distinguish the 
several sounds uttered by a Frenchman, a Russian, 
a Spaniard, or a Gaelic Highlander, speaking rapidly, 
as it is to distinguish from one another the separate 
sounds in the song of the lark or the nightingale, 
or the twitter of sparrows. In Scotland the cuckoo 
is called the gowk, as it used to be formerly called 
in England ; and the saying remains in the northern 
parts of the island that a very silly person is cc as 
stupid as a gowk." A gowk means a fool, or a 
person that is always saying the same thing, and has 
but one idea — like the Cuckoo. But no one thinks 
of applying such an epithet of scorn to a real 
singing-bird, that has many notes in its voice, and 
consequently expresses a larger number of ideas. 
Every one knows the paucity of mere sounds in a 



OF ANIMALS. 37 

musical octave — the seven notes of the gamut, with 
their flats and sharps ; but out of these seven come 
all the national melodies, all the glees and madrigals, 
all the popular tunes, all the dances and galops, all 
the reels and strathspeys, all the hymns and songs, 
all the oratorios, all the grand and little operas, that 
ever have been or ever will be composed ; so that, 
if we grant even so few as seven notes to the lark 
or the nightingale, we grant it a language, or, at all 
events, the possibility of a language or a vocabu- 
lary, quite as rich as that of Hodge the farm- 
labourer, with his . five or six hundred words, or 
that of the little child, that uses scarcely half the 
number. 

These remarks, speculations, or arguments, which- 
ever the reader may consider them to be, apply only 
to those sounds at the command of the inferior 
creation which may, for all we know to the con- 
trary, serve as the constituent syllables of the words 
which make their language, and not to those other 
languages of the eye, or the gesture, which human 
beings with articulate speech at their disposal so 
constantly employ. The eyes of man or woman, as 
everybody knows and has felt, can express love, or 
hate, or fear, or anger, without the necessity of 
speech ; and so may the eyes of all creatures that 
possess the gift of sight. Gestures and signs, in 
like manner, as we know, not only by the example 



38 THE LANGUAGE 

of the deaf and dumb, who have been tanght the 
alphabet of the fingers, but by what we may daily 
witness in the conduct of domestic animals towards 
each other, may serve largely for the expression 
of love or hatred. This power of language even 
Lord Monboddo and Mr. Locke would have con- 
ceded; and so, doubtless, would Mr. Max Muller. 
In this manner the meanest things that live and 
feel have power of communication with their fellows, 
as well as with such a superior creature as man, 
when they become either attached to or afraid of 
him. But the question whether some kind of 
articulate speech is not at their command — available 
among themselves, though not to man, on account 
of man's incapacity to bring down his big intellect 
into the little circle of theirs, or of the dulness of 
his ear to sounds that may be very clear, sharp, and 
well-defined to theirs — remains unajffected by their 
undoubted possession of the mute language of 
gesture and the eyes. The spider, with his hundred 
eyes, cannot see me if I stand at the distance of a 
few inches from his cunning web ; but would 
Mr. Spider, if he were a philosopher, be justified, 
on that account, in asserting that I was not there, 
or even that I did not exist ? Is it my imperfection 
that he cannot behold me ? In like manner, is 
it not my imperfection if I cannot see or hear that 
which smaller things can both hear and see ? The 



OF ANIMALS. 39 

animalcule in a drop of water, that sees and some- 
times eats smaller animalcules than himself, is 
doubtless in entire ignorance of all beyond the 
circle of his water-drop ; but he would be a silly 
animalcule if he were, on that account, to deny the 
existence of anything bigger and nobler than him- 
self. And you and I, dear reader, may never have 
heard a fly talk to a fly, or a worm to a worm, 
or been able to make out the language of the birds 
when they mate about St. Valentine's Day ; but the 
fly may have talked to the fly, the worm to the 
worm, and the bird to the bird, all the same for our 
incapacity to hear the talk of the one or understand 
the song of the other. 

Most people who are gifted with the faculty of 
observing, and blessed with the privilege of enjoying, 
the sights and sounds of nature, and who have 
either resided in, or been frequent visitors to, the 
country, must at one time or other have remarked 
the actions and behaviour of crows and rooks, or, in 
the quaint language of the old Scottish poet, 
Alexander Montgomery, must have listened to, and 
been " deaved with the din 

And jargon of the jangling jays, 

The craiking craws, and keckling kays." 

"No one who has at all studied the habits of these 
birds will think it a very daring assertion that the 
cry or sound of <( caw " may be as susceptible of a 



40 THE LANGUAGE 

variety of meanings as the Annamitic " ba," or the 
English " box/' or the French " sang," or the 
canine " bow-wow ! " — and that its duplication into 
l( caw ! caw ! " or into a still greater number of re- 
petitions, is not without a purpose and signification 
as intelligible to the birds which utter as to those 
which hear them. The rooks and crows have often 
been observed to hold public meetings of all the 
individuals in the tribe or colony — male and female 
(for in their democracy, as well as in that which 
Mr. John Stuart Mill proposes for England, the 
mothers as well as the fathers, the paired as well as 
the unpaired of both sexes have votes) — to debate 
on matters of importance. As far as we know and 
can understand the objects of these assemblages, 
the tribe is summoned to decide whether a sickly 
bird is so sickly as to be beyond hope of recovery, 
and therefore to be put out of its misery, they having 
no doctors among them ; whether an interloper from 
a neighbouring colony has not violently or surrep- 
titiously endeavoured to establish himself among 
them ; or whether he has not committed some other 
offence against the lex non scrijpta of their com- 
munity which calls for reprobation or punishment. 
At all events, something marvellously like a trial 
takes place, with a judge or presiding officer, and 
the whole community for the jurors. The prisoner, 
looking dejected, penitent, and woebegone, is 



OF ANIMALS. 41 

perched in the middle. A series of caw-ca wings 
ensues, which, as Lord Dundreary might say, " no 
fellow can understand," but which cannot be other- 
wise than intelligible to the sachems and members 
of the corvine tribe — or why should the sounds be 
uttered ? — and which, protracted sometimes for 
twenty or thirty minutes, or even for an hour, 
results in a decision of some kind. If the defendant 
flies away comfortably with the judge and jury at 
the conclusion of the council, we have a right to 
suppose that he has been acquitted. If, on the 
contrary, as often happens, the whole tribe pounce 
upon him with beak and claw, and peck him to 
death, screeching and caw- cawing all the while, we 
must suppose, on the same principle, that he has 
been found guilty of some crime or other — perhaps 
of being hopelessly unwell — sentenced to death, 
and executed accordingly. If there be thought in 
these matters among the birds, is it not right, even 
according to the theory of Mr. Max Muller and the 
other philosophers, to suppose that there is language 
also ? And if a stray rook or crow happened to 
make its way into the Central Criminal Court while 
a trial was pending, and perched himself, like Edgar 
Poe s raven, on the top of a bookcase or the cross- 
beam of , a door, and listened attentively to the 
pleadings, to the examination of the witnesses, and 
the judge's charge, without understanding a word 



42 THE LANGUAGE 

that was said, would Mr. Crow or Mr. Rook be 
justified, if he could get back to his comrades in 
the woods, in asserting that men had no articulate 
language ? 

When sparrows quarrel among themselves on a 
marital or amorous question, and all the branches 
of a tree resound with their angry and recriminatory 
twitterings, do not these sparrows talk? And 
when swallows assemble, at the close of summer, 
preparatory to their annual migration to the trans- 
lucent waters and the ever-green umbrageousness 
of the south, is there no language in the sounds 
they utter ? Do they not deliberate whether the 
summer be indeed gone in the regions which they 
still inhabit ? Do they not ask one another whether 
it is still possible to stay a little longer, and be con- 
tented with the good things they enjoy ? or whether 
the icy breath of winter is not even now palpable to 
them, if not to men, creeping and soon to be blow- 
ing from afar ? — and whether, consequently, it is 
not expedient for them to spread their wings and 
fly away to the bright regions where winter never 
penetrates ? If they do not say these things, they 
say something — of that there can be little doubt ; 
and because we possess no swallow grammar, and 
no hirondelle dictionary, are we not a little too wise 
in our own conceit if we assume that no such lan- 
guage is possible ? 



OF ANIMALS. 43 

If, descending in the scale of creation from the 
qnadrnpeds and birds that emit sounds which are 
perfectly audible to themselves and us — whatever 
those sounds may mean — to that lower world of 
insect life which emits little and sometimes no sound 
that our ears can detect, we may still discover rea- 
son to believe that they may have some power of 
speech — possibly by means of sound, possibly by 
means of touch and signs. Take bees and ants as 
familiar examples. When the bees in a hive select 
one particular bee, and station her at the entrance 
— like a hall-porter at a club in Pali-Mall — and 
assign to her the duty, which she well performs, of 
allowing none but members of the hive to pass in, 
is it not certain that the functionary has been chosen 
for sufficient reasons from the rest, and informed 
of the wishes of the community ? This cannot be 
done without a language of some sort, whether of 
the eye, the touch, or the expression of a sound or 
series of sounds. When black ants make war against 
red ants, for the purpose of taking the children of 
the latter into captivity and making slaves of them, 
is war declared without preliminary consultation? 
and, if not, must not these belligerent Formicans 
have a language ? The battles of the ants have 
often been seen, and often described. I was one day 
strolling on the wild and beautiful shore of Loch Eck, 
in Argyllshire, when I sat me down to rest by the 



■ 44 THE LANGUAGE 

side of a little rill or burnie that trickled down a 
bank, when I noticed that a large flat stone or slab, 
that ages ago, perhaps, had slidden down from the 
mountain — a slab that was about five or six feet 
long by about as many wide — was covered with 
ants of two species — the one with wings, the other 
wingless — and that they were fighting a desperate 
battle, a very Waterloo or Sadowa of carnage. The 
stone was encumbered with the dead and dying; 
battalion charged battalion, division assailed divi- 
sion, while episodes of individual bravery — one 
single combatant against another — spotted the 
battle-field. There were march and countermarch, 
assault and defence, retreat and pursuit, and, as far 
as my unpractised eye could judge, a considerable 
amount of care and attention to the wounded and 
disabled. Returning home to my books, I found 
a description in Leigh Hunt's " Companion" of 
a similar battle, on the authority of a German 
naturalist, named Hanhart, and a still more inte- 
resting description in " Episodes of Insect Life," 
by Acheta Domestica, both confirmatory of what I 
had seen, and both containing particulars of the 
mode of battle, which I had been unable to under- 
stand. The puzzle was then, as it still is, whether 
these quarrelsome little Formicans could form them- 
selves into battalions, arrange plans of attack and 
defence, appoint commanders and captains, and 



OF ANIMALS. 45 

play the parts of Napoleon and Wellington, without 
some means of intercommnnication of idea, equiva- 
lent, in its results, to human speech ? The question 
cannot be decided, except inferentially, and by 
arguing from the known to the unknown. If treated 
in this manner, there is much more to be said in 
favour of the proposition that the Formicans can 
speak to each other than can be said against it — 
especially if, remembering with Shakespeare, that 
there are more things in heaven and earth than are 
dreamt of in our philosophy, we consider, at the 
same time, that there may be an infinitude of sounds 
in Nature which our ears are too dull to hear, and 
of which the vibrations are far too faint and delicate 
to strike upon the human tympanum. 

Without dogmatising on the subject, a student 
of Nature may be permitted to express his belief 
that the all-wise and infinitely beneficent Creator 
has not only given to every living creature, great 
or small, the capacity for enjoyment, and the con- 
sequent capacity for pain, but the power of express- 
ing to its own kind its joy or sorrow, its fears, its 
wishes, and its wants ; and that man is not so wholly 
a monopolist of speech and reason as the philo- 
sophers have imagined. 

It may be fairly argued that the non-existence of 
speech among animals, and even among insects, is 
(to use the Scottish law phrase) "not proven." 






46 LANGUAGE OF ANIMALS. 

The sun may spread around a very great and 
glorious radiance, and a candle may emit a very 
small glimmer; but there is light in both cases. 
Man's reasoning powers, and the speech that accom- 
panies them, when compared with the reasoning 
faculty and the speech of all the inferior inhabitants 
of the globe, may be as greatly in excess of theirs 
as the noonday sunshine is in excess of the ray of 
a farthing candle ; but the least particle of reason- 
ing power is reason as far as it extends. What we 
call instinct is but a kind and degree of reason, 
and, in a world full of balances and compensations, 
its very inferiority has its compensation in the fact 
that, unlike reason, instinct never goes wrong. 
If animals cannot understand our language unless 
in very few instances of ordinary occurrence and 
when accompanied by sign, gesture, and the expres- 
sion of the eye, neither can we understand their 
language, except it have the same mute accompani- 
ments. Mr. Emerson says, C( that we are wiser than 
we know;" I say it is possible, that with all our 
undoubted superiority, and all our pride of intellect, 
we are not so wise as we think. 





THE INTELLIGENCE OF PLANTS. 

HATEVER be the exact difference be- 
tween reason and instinct, which has 
been rather a puzzling matter for philo- 
sophers in all ages, and however much 
or however little of either faculty may be possessed 
by men and animals, be the latter large as elephants, 
eagles, and whales, or small as mice, butterflies, or 
animalculae, man clearly admits that these creatures 
have a certain degree of intelligence which is useful 
to them. He will not, however, admit this to be 
true in the case of plants and vegetables, whether 
as regards reason, instinct, or any minor degree of 
intelligence whatsoever. The great naturalist, Lin- 
nseus, although he was the first to declare and pro- 
mulgate that plants and flowers, as well as animals, 
are male and female — a discovery which one would 
suppose might have led him to acknowledge sen- 
sation, if not intelligence, in these living beings, 
says, in defining the differences between the mineral, 



43 THE INTELLIGENCE 

vegetable,, and animal kingdoms, c ' Minerals grow ; 
vegetables grow and live ; animals live, grow, and 
feel." In other words, he asserts that the members 
of the vegetable world do not iC feel." Another and 
more recent definition sets forth that " a plant is an 
organised being, unconscious of its own existence, 
fed by inorganic substances which it extracts from 
air or water, according to laws independent of the 
formulee of organic chemistry, by the help of a 
faculty dependent on vital force." Are these ideas 
just, and these definitions correct ? I think not, 
and have been led by observation to believe that 
plants are conscious of their own existence, and 
therefore of their own wants, and that they are en- 
dowed, not only with feeling or sensation, but with 
intelligence in such degree as is sufficient to make 
life pleasant to them, and enable them to take proper 
measures for its preservation. 

When we consider the extreme beauty of plants 
and flowers, and know from experience that they 
live, propagate, and die, it seems like setting a 
presumptuous limit to the divine love of God, to 
deny that he has given sensation to such lovely 
creatures. If the oyster fastened upon the rock can 
feel, why not the rose or the convolvulus, or the 
great oak-tree that is fast rooted in the ground ? 
The glow of the sunshine or the freshness of the rain 
and the air that feed plants and vegetables, are they 



OF PLANTS. 49 

not agreeable to the plants and vegetables,, as things 
to be felt and enjoyed ? Who can tell ? Or who 
shall deny, and give good reason for his incredulity ? 
What philosopher can prove this negation ? And, 
in point of fact, who, however learned he may be, 
can decide where animal life ends and where vege- 
table life begins ? What, for instance, is a sponge ? 
And if, as Linneeus says, plants have no feeling, 
what makes the mimosa, or sensitive plant, shrink 
so timidly from the slightest touch, and apparently 
with such pain or terror from a ruder blow ? 
Whether I am scientifically and philosophically right 
or wrong, I take a pleasure in believing that 

To every thing that lives, 
The kind Creator gives 
Share of enjoyment, 

and that the possession of life, in however infini- 
tesimal a degree, presupposes in its possessor, 
whether animal or vegetable, a faculty of sensation 
that administers to its happiness, and that may con- 
sequently administer to its suffering. For pleasure 
and pain are twins, and the one is not attainable 
without liability to the other. The idea is not new 
to poetry, though not accepted by science. It 
blooms and sparkles in the graceful mythology of 
Greece, and the somewhat less graceful mythology 
of Rome, as all who remember the Dryads and 
Hamadryads ■ — the loves of Apollo with Laura, 



50 TEE INTELLIGENCE 

Daphne, and Acantha, or who at school or col- 
lege have pored over the metaphors of Ovid, will 
readily admit. The poets of India and Persia 
delighted to animate the flowers and trees, and, 
according to Hafiz, the rose appreciates the tender 
melodies of her lover the nightingale. Greek super- 
stition endowed the atropa mandragora with all the 
sensations of an animal, and believed that it shrieked 
with pain when its roots were wrested from the 
ground. 

Science may laugh at all such notions ; but 
Science, though a very great and learned lady, does 
not know everything-, and her elder sister, Poetry, 
often sees further and deeper into things than she 
does. Did not Shakespeare, in the " Tempest," 
foreshadow the possibility of the electric telegraph 
more than two hundred years before Wheatstone ? 
Did not Dr. Erasmus Darwin, long in advance of 
James Watt and Robert Stephenson, predict the 
steamship and the locomotive engine ? And did 
not Coleridge, in the " Ancient Mariner," very 
clearly explain the modus operandi of the then un- 
suspected atmospheric railway ? 

On the question of the intelligence of plants, I 
must confess that my convictions as well as my 
sympathies go with the poets rather than with the 
scientific men. I know that the trees and the 
flowers, inasmuch as they live, are my fellow- 



OF PLANTS. 51 

creatures,, and the children of the same God as 
myself, and, like niyself, it is to be presumed,, en- 
dowed with the faculty, though possibly in a much 
fainter degree, of enjoying the world in which His 
love and goodness have placed both them and me. 
They breathe, they perspire, they sleep, they feed 
themselves, and may be overfed ; they are male and 
female. If science admits all these facts, how can 
it logically stop short at such a definition as that of 
Linnseus, and deny them sensation ? Darwin, in 
his philosophical poem, the " Botanic Garden" (not 
much read in the present day) , fancifully describes 
the Loves of the Flowers, and imagines, not perhaps 
wrongly, that love-making may be as agreeable to 
them as it is to higher organisations : — 

What beaux and beauties crowd the gaudy groves, 
And woo and win their vegetable loves ! 
Here snowdrops cold and blue-eyed harebells blend 
Their tender tears as o'er the stream they bend ; 
The love-sick violet and the primrose, pale, 
Bow their sweet heads, and whisper to the gale ; 
"With secret sighs, the virgin lily droops, 
And jealous cowslips hang their tawny cups ; 
And the young rose, in beauty's damask pride, 
Drinks the warm blushes of his bashful bride ; 
With honey lips, enamoured woodbines meet, 
Clasp with fond arms, and mix their kisses sweet. 

This may be thought an idle dream, unworthy of 
serious, or, more especially, of scientific considera- 



52 THE INTELLIGENCE 

tion ; while some very matter-of-fact persons msij 
ask, how there can be sensation without senses ? 
It is true that flowers have no organs of sight, or 
hearing, or taste, or smell, that man can discover ; 
but they may, nevertheless, possess a very delicate 
sense of touch. And how much intelligence may 
display itself, without any other sense than this, is 
known to every one who has read the remarkable 
story of Laura Bridgeman. In her earliest infancy, 
this unhappy person lost her eyes, her ears, her 
palate ; every door of the inner spirit leading to the 
outer world of life and humanity, save the one door 
of touch. But through that door, by the patient 
sagacity and untiring kindliness of Dr. Howe, of 
Boston, Massachusetts, the resident physician of 
the Blind Asylum, to which she was consigned as a 
patient of whom there was no hope, she was en- 
abled to communicate her wants, her wishes, her 
hopes, and her ideas to her fellow- creatures, and to 
share, to some extent, in the knowledge and the 
civilization of her time. Though she can neither 
see nor hear, nor articulate, nor remember the time 
when her eyes were open to the light, she can talk 
with her fingers, and receive responses through the 
same medium. Though the great world of sound 
and the joyous world of music are as alien to her as 
invisible planets on the uttermost verge of sidereal 
space, yet, by means of the one sense mercifully 



OF PLANTS. 53 

left to her— that of touch — she is able to distinguish 
her friends and acquaintances the one from the 
other, and to enjoy music, by means of the vibra- 
tion through her sensitive and delicate nerves, of 
the rhythmic pulsations of the air caused by the 
great organ in the hall of the asylum, which throb 
through her whole body, giving her a palpable 
pleasure, possibly as great to her as that which more 
fortunate persons can derive from the sense of 
hearing. " Little chinks let in much light," says 
the ancient proverb ; and through the one little 
chink of feeling, touch, or sensation, the intelligence 
of Laura Bridgeman can both act and be acted 
upon. And if it be granted that the trees, the 
plants, and the flowers possess this one sense — and 
who can prove that they do not ? — may we not 
reasonably suppose that some degree of intelligence 
and capacity for pleasure and pain go along with it ? 
Being a systematic man, although a very busy 
one, I always find that I have time to spare for my 
amusement. I also find that my amusement often 
assumes the shape of a new variety of work, and 
that when I have had enough of work that I am 
compelled to do, I take a turn at some other kind 
of work, to which nothing compels me but my own 
love for it. In this manner I have become a student 
of natural history; and whenever I walk in my 
garden, or through the green lanes and country 



54 THE INTELLIGENCE 

roads, over the meadow path, or through the woods, 
I always discover something to interest me in the 
phenomena of Nature, animate and inanimate. I 
have educated my eyes as well as my mind, in 
remembrance of the sage maxim, " that in every 
object there is inexhaustible meaning ; and that the 
eye always sees what the eye brings the means of 
seeing." And last summer in my garden, when 
resting and amusing myself after protracted mental 
labour, I made the acquaintance of a very respect- 
able, and as I found reason to believe, a very intelli- 
gent plant, and studied its growth and its move- 
ments during two or three weeks. The plant was 
Cucurbita ovifera, known to market-gardeners and 
housekeepers as the vegetable marrow. This, like 
all of its genus, will creep along the ground if it 
find nothing up which it can climb ; but if there be 
a tree, a branch, a pole, or a wall within easy reach, 
it will infallibly make its way to it, and twine its 
tendrils round the most available points of support. 
The vegetable marrow, like the vine, the hop, the 
briony, and all other varieties of the genus vitis, is, 
to use the words of Barry Cornwall, applied to her 
more renowned sister the grape-vine, one ' ' who 
weareth a hundred rings and a roamer o'er wall and 
tree." I noticed that this particular plant extended 
its tendrils outwards, and away from the trunk of 
a hazel, and from a box-hedge of about seven feet 



OF PLANTS. 55 

high, and towards a gravel path. It persevered in 
extending itself in this direction for three days, 
after I first began to take notice of it ; but on the 
fourth morning I perceived that it had changed the 
course which its tendrils were pursuing, and had 
turned them in the contrary direction towards the 
box-hedge. In two days more it had securely 
fastened itself to the hedge with its old tendrils, 
and put forth new a short distance higher up, with 
which also in due time it enveloped the supporting 
tree, which, for the first portion of its life, it had 
sought in the wrong" direction. Another marrow, 
further removed from all support, had also put forth 
its feelers towards the gravel path, but finding 
nothing to lay hold of, turned them back in a similar 
manner ; but like the first one, only to meet with a 
disappointment. The marrow, however, made the 
best of unfavourable circumstances, as a wise man 
and a wise plant should do, and meeting with the 
tendrils of a sister or a brother marrow engaged in 
the like pursuit of a prop under difficulties, they 
resolved apparently that, as union was strength, 
they would twist around each other. And they did 
so. After they had been intertwined for a day, I 
deliberately and very tenderly removed them, with 
such care as not to injure the tender stalks and ten- 
drils, and laid them apart on the ground. In less 
than twenty-four hours they had found each other 



56 THE INTELLIGENCE 

out again, and twisted their slender cords together 
in a loving, or a friendly, or at least a mutually 
supporting union. Much interested in these en- 
terprising" marrows, I tried some experiments with 
another climbing- plant, the scarlet-runner ; and un- 
twisted one that had grown to the height of about 
a foot up the pole which had been placed for its 
reception, and twisted it carefully round another 
pole, which I had stuck into the ground at a dis- 
tance of about an inch from the old one. The 
scarlet-runner, however, had a will of its own, and 
would not cling to the new pole, unless I would tie 
it, which would have ruined the experiment. I 
therefore left the plant to do as it pleased ; and in 
two days afterwards I found it on its original pole, 
twined securely around it. I repeated this experi- 
ment several times afterwards, with briony and 
hop, and always discovered that the only means 
to make a creeper creep, or a climber climb, in a 
direction different from that which it had already 
taken, was to tie or fasten it ; and that if left freely 
to itself, it persisted in carrying out its original 
intentions. Is this intelligence or instinct ; or is it 
merely mechanical action ? During the same season, 
I had occasion to remark that several climbing roses 
in front of my cottage seemed sickly, and on in- 
vestigating the cause of their ill-health, discovered 
that the soil in which they grew was very poor, and 



OF PLANTS. 57 

consisted merely of a thin layer of earth over the 
chalk ; that their roots had reached the chalky and 
could not penetrate it, and that they decayed in 
strength for want of proper nourishment. I had a 
pit dug of about three feet in depth all along the 
front where the roses grew ; and filled it up with 
new soil,, manure, and rotted leaves, in which they 
have since thriven remarkably well. A healthy and 
luxuriant honeysuckle around these roses, that clam- 
bers over my cottage porch, was at the same time 
laid bare to the roots. I found that the honeysuckle 
had been wiser than the roses, and instead of push- 
ing its roots vertically downwards to the barren 
chalk, had extended them horizontally through the 
thin layer of earth, immediately under the sod, to 
the distance of no less than eight feet from the 
stem. Was this instinct or intelligence ? Or was 
it blind mechanical force ? My opinion is, that it 
was intelligence, and the adaptation of means to 
ends by a will that might have acted otherwise. 
Every plant growing in a darkened room, bends 
itself to the chance light that may happen to pene- 
trate through a hole or a chink; and every such 
plant overshadowed by trees of larger growth, en- 
deavours to stretch itself beyond their influence, 
and to catch the sunlight which a superior circum- 
ference of shadow prevents from reaching all beneath 
them. Is this instinct, intelligence, or mechanical 



58 INTELLIGENCE OF PLANTS. 

force ? I confess my inability to decide. I doubt 
the ability of any one else to settle the question, and 
taking refuge in the idea that every manifestation 
of God's power and love is illimitable, and may be 
infinitely small as well as infinitely great, I come to 
the conclusion that there is no life upon this globe, 
however humble, which is so wholly unintelligent 
as to be helpless for its own sustenance and preser- 
vation ; and unendowed with the capacity of joy or 
sorrow. And in corroboration as well as conclusion 
— quote the serious prose, rather than the poetic 
fancies of Darwin : " The vegetable passion of love 
is agreeably seen in the flower of the parnassia, in 
which the males alternately approach and recede 
from the females, and in the flower of the nigefla, 
or ' Devil in the Bush/ in which the tall females 
bend down to their dwarf husbands." 

Where there is both love and beauty, as in flowers, 
is absence of sensation possible ? 






COUNTRY AND TOWN SPARROWS. 

HATEVER the fair Lesbia may have 
done in the days of Horace and Me- 
ceenas, nobody in our time makes a 
household pet or a bosom friend of the 
sparrow. Nor has the sparrow much to recommend 
him to affection or familiarity. He is not beautiful, 
like the canary ; he cannot sing, like the lark or the 
nightingale ; but only chirp and twitter in a manner 
that is not particularly agreeable ; and, unlike the 
duck, the goose, the barn-door fowl, or the ortolan, 
he has no attraction for the disciples of Brillat 
Savarin, and would be scorned as food by the hun- 
griest of human beings. But, notwithstanding all 
these deficiencies, there is a good word to be said 
for the sparrow, blackguard among the birds as he 
may be. He is brave and lively in his behaviour to 
the outer world, and very affectionate to his mate 
and little ones in domestic life. He, moreover, plays 
his allotted part in the beneficent scheme of nature, 



60 COUNTRY AND 

as much as man does at one end of the great chain 
and the animalcule at the other. 

There are, according to Buffon, who calls the 
sparrow an " idle glutton/' no less than sixty-seven 
varieties of this well-known bird. The best known 
of the sixty- seven — all of them inhabitants of the 
old or Eastern hemisphere, and none of them known, 
except by name, in the Western world — are the 
house sparrow, the tree sparrow, and the hedge 
sparrow; to which I think should be added the 
London sparrow. Unlike the swallow, the cuckoo, 
and other migratory birds, the sparrow does not seek 
a perpetual spring or summer, by travel to the sunny 
south, but stays with us in all seasons. The severest- 
winter does not drive him away, though it may some- 
times kill him or force him to desperate straits for a 
subsistence. All the year round he twitters in town 
and country, and picks up a livelihood as best he 
can; and all the year round he multiplies his kind. 
The hen produces three broods in the twelvemonth. 
Next to his fondness for human neighbourhood — 
for the sparrow is never found in the wilderness or 
in dense forests, but always within easy flight of the 
cottager's chimney or the smoke of city houses — his 
great characteristics are amativeness and combat- 
iveness — cause and effect. When he has fixed his 
affections on the charmer of his heart, and any 
other sparrow presumes even so much as to look at 



TOWN S PAR BO TVS. 61 

her, or to utter one loving chirp to distract her 
attention, woe betide the interloper, unless he be a 
much stronger and fiercer bird than his antagonist. 
War is declared immediately, and a combat ensues, 
in which, as among men, the prize falls to the 
possession of the victor. " None but the brave 
deserve the fair," is a maxim apparently as well 
understood among sparrows as it used to be among 
the preux chevaliers or knights errant of the olden 
time. In his domestic life, as far as man can judge 
of him by external appearances, the sparrow is 
happy. He and his mate are fond of home ; and if 
any one wickedly destroys their nest they indulge in 
no vain repining, but immediately set about build- 
ing another ; not like the waggoner in the fable, 
asking Jupiter to help them in their distress, but 
helping themselves, as all good birds, and all good 
people, ought to do. And if a mischievous farm- 
boy steal her eggs, Mrs. Sparrow, instead of weeping 
disconsolately over her loss, for more than a very 
brief period of natural disappointment, proceeds 
forthwith to fill up the void thus created in her 
domestic circle by the production of just as many 
eggs as have been taken from her. 

Once, before I knew any better, I was fool enough 
to think that the sparrow preferred worms, slugs 
and caterpillars to the produce of the garden. I 
allured him to my window by daily feasts of bread- 



62 COUNTRY AND 

crumbs and chopped fat. One sparrow seemed to 
tell another of the good fortune thus awaiting the 
birds ; and the first corner, who, in nine cases out 
of ten, was a sparrow, no sooner flew away to the 
tree or hedge, or house-top which he inhabited with 
a crust or crumb about the size of his head, than 
down came from all points of the compass a dozen 
or two of his friends or acquaintances. Sometimes 
a mutton or a fish bone that my dog had done with 
was thrown among the crumbs, and the sparrow, not 
at all particular about his diet, proceeded to pick it, 
and, if it were a marrow bone, to put his bill into it 
in search of the choice morsels which the dog's teeth 
and tongue had been unable to reach. The female 
sparrow brought her young ones to these symposia 
as soon as they were able to fly, and stuffed the large 
pieces of bread or fat down their gaping throats 
with true maternal devotion. It cannot be said 
that she feeds her " little ones," for what, consider- 
ing their age, ought to be her little ones, were, in 
point of fact, her " large " ones. You have but to 
fancy Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Jones, or any other fair 
lady of your acquaintance, who had been married a 
twelvemonth, and had a baby to feed as big as her- 
self and her husband rolled into one, to realize the 
comparative size of the sparrow's progeny and the 
mother's thoughtful care in nursing*, tending*, and 
providing for such monsters. Not that the size of 



TOWN SPARROWS. 63 

the young sparrow represents flesh and blood. On 
the contrary, it represents little but feathers. As 
the young bird grows old its size diminishes. The 
feast that attracts the sparrows attracts other varie- 
ties of birds — the chaffinch, the bullfinch, the gold- 
finch, the blackbird, the thrush, the starling, and 
the robin redbreast. JSTone of these associate 
with the sparrow, but watch their chance when 
the vulgar little birds have flown away. The 
robin especially seems to avoid the sparrow, and 
will no more associate with him than a gentle- 
man will shake hands with a chimney-sweep. The 
blackbirds and thrushes — thrice as large as spar- 
rows — will on no account eat with them, but, like 
the robin, take the opportunity of the sparrow's ab- 
sence to claim a share of any of the good things 
that may be going*. Is it because, as the nursery 
rhyme says, " the sparrow killed cock robin with 
his bow and arrow," in some far-distant period of 
antiquity, that to this day the robin refuses so per- 
tinaciously to have anything to do with his tradi- 
tionary foe ? or does the robin consider himself an 
aristocrat and the sparrow a rough ? Whatever the 
reason may be, no sparrow is admissible into the 
robin's society, or into that, as far as my observa- 
tions extend, of any other bird whatever. Another 
difference of character between the robin and the 
sparrow deserves notice. However often you 



64 COUNTRY AND 

may feed the sparrow,, and however well lie may in 
consequence become acquainted with you, he can- 
not be induced to enter the house. The robin, on 
the contrary, after a little while, will hop in at the 
open window or door, and trust to your generosity 
and sense of honour not to try to capture him. 
The sparrow, besides being distrustful, seems to be 
a pariah among the feathered race, the lowest of the 
low, the vulgarest of the vulgar, the slightest contact 
with whom is as contaminating as greased cartridges 
to a Sepoy. The sparrow, however, does not seem 
to take to heart the dislike with which he is regarded; 
and if other birds are to dine off the crumbs that my 
hand distributes, he takes especial care that he shall 
have the first pickings. He is not afraid of any of 
them, however large, and, in fact, does not seem to 
be afraid of anything but a man, a woman, a dog, or 
a cat. Once I noticed a rat venture, just as the spar- 
rows had left the ground clear for a minute, to run off 
with a small piece of bread. Half a dozen sparrows 
immediately flew down from a tree, and chased him 
with vociferous twitterings, till he disappeared into 
his hole — not, however, discomfited, for he got clear 
off with his prize. 

Though I once fed the sparrows during a whole 
winter — a piece of benevolence which my subsequent 
knowledge of sparrow-nature, has induced me not to 
repeat, I found that they did not spare my garden 



TOWN SPARROWS. 65 

in the spring and summer on that account. My 
gardener held that I did mischief by my ill-judged 
kindness, and that I attracted to the place a hun- 
dred sparrows for every one that would otherwise 
have frequented it. However this may be, I know, 
that they had not the smallest amount of gra- 
titude, but, like human sinners, did those things 
which they ought not to have done, and eat those 
things which I would much rather they had let 
alone. They dug up with their bills the seed newly 
sown in the ground, especially the carrots, the tur- 
nips, the spinach, the parsnips, and the lettuces. 
Whether they watched with their sharp little eyes 
from some neighbouring tree the process of sowing 
the seed, and knew where to go to in the gardener's 
absence, or whether, as the gardener said, they 
smelt the seed in the ground, I am unable to 
say. I only know that they were very destruc- 
tive till I employed a method to punish or pre- 
vent their depredations. The sparrow has very 
tender feet, and does not like to have them pricked 
or stung, either by pulverised glass, or by what is 
better for the purpose, the common prickly furze 
chopped small and strewed over the ground. Thus, 
whenever I sow seed which is in danger from them, 
I strew chopped furze over the place ; and the spar- 
row after one trial at robbery gives over the attempt, 
and transfers his attentions to some one with less 

F 



6Q COUNTRY AND 

experience of his tricks. The sparrow is particu- 
larly fond of the first tender buds of gooseberry and 
currant bushes,, which in the early spring he some- 
times strips bare of their nascent leaves. He is also 
very partial to the young lettuces when they first 
appear above the ground, and as for peas, straw- 
berries, cherries, red and white currants, he is, as 
Buffon says, a veritable, though by no means an 
idle, glutton. Not being a farmer I cannot state 
from experience the damage he does to the ripening 
corn ; but the French naturalist calculated that it 
would require twenty pounds of grain to keep a 
pair of sparrows for a year. This calculation pre- 
supposes that the birds should be kept in captivity, 
and fed with nothing else but corn ; whereas the 
sparrow in his wild state is as omnivorous as man. 
The farmers, as most people know, have a great 
objection to sparrows. In some parts of the country 
they enrol themselves into sparrow-clubs, for the 
purpose of exterminating these busy depredators, 
and in most parts of the country they employ small 
boys in the corn-fields to frighten them awajr, either 
by shouts or cries, or by the more effectual discharge 
of fire-arms. 

Honest old Bewick, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, an 
excellent naturalist as well as an artist, says upon 
this subject : 

" Most of the smaller birds are supported, espe- 



TOWN 8 P ARROWS. 67 

cially when young, by a profusion of caterpillars, 
small worms, and insects ; on these they feed, and 
thus they contribute to preserve the vegetable world 
from destruction. This is contrary to the commonly 
received opinion that birds, particularly sparrows, do 
much mischief in destroying the labours of the gar- 
dener and husbandman. It has been observed ( that 
a single pair of sparrows, during the time they are 
feeding their young, will destroy about/bw thousand 
caterpillars weekly ! ' They likewise feed their young 
with butterflies and other winged insects, each of 
which, if not destroyed in this manner, would be 
productive of several hundreds of caterpillars. Let 
us not condemn a whole species of animals because, 
in some instances, we have found them troublesome 
or inconvenient. Of this we are sufficiently sensible, 
but the uses to which they are subservient in the 
grand economical distribution of nature, we cannot 
so easily ascertain. We have already observed that 
in the destruction of caterpillars, sparrows are emi- 
nently serviceable to vegetation, and in this respect 
alone, there is reason to suppose, sufficiently repay 
the destruction they make in the produce of the 
garden and the field. " 

My experience of the sparrow does not accord 
with that of Bewick ; and as far as I have been able 
to ascertain he eats very few insects, and never eats 
one when he can get anything else. 



68 COUNTRY AND 

The London sparrow, like other created things, 
takes something of his colour from his habitat, and 
is a brown, dingy, dirty, smoke -hued featherling, 
compared with the country sparrow, in whose 
plumage white, and grey, and pure black, mingle 
harmoniously with russet brown, which is the pre- 
dominant colour of his livery. He has to make 
as hard a fight for his living as the " city Arab." 
There are no corn-fields to pillage, no orchards to 
rob, no succulent green peas or juicy cherries to be 
got. There is nothing for him but the refuse of 
men and animals ; flies, spiders, earwigs, and all the 
vermin that haunt the crannies of old brickwork, or 
imbed themselves in the interstices of the slates and 
tiles. In the country he has human enemies, and 
a good many of them ; in the town his only enemy 
is the cat. There is, it is true, a tradition that 
some poor Polish and other political refugees from 
the wars, revolutions, and intrigues of Continental 
Europe, who inhabit the foreign settlements around 
Leicester Square, are in the habit of setting traps 
and springes for the sparrows at the windows of 
their squalid attics, and eating them, in default 
sometimes of any other kind of food ; but if this be 
the case, it is exceptional, and can make but slight 
inroad upon the security of almost the only small 
bird that lives in a state of nature and wild free- 
dom in the metropolis. Among the Londoners 






TOWN SPARROWS. 69 

the sparrow is rather a favourite than otherwise,, 
and many a fair hand of child or woman in many a 
poor locality strews bread-crumbs on some humble 
balcony to attract the little dusky chirp er to the 
window. The sparrows soon discover the places 
where such treats are provided, and learn to come 
regularly for their dinner or breakfast, if punctuality 
be one of the virtues of the donor. 

Nature, all wise and beneficent, provided a means 
for keeping down the exuberant propagation of the 
sparrow, as of every other kind of life. The means 
were hawks, falcons, owls, and other birds of prey. 
But English landed proprietors in their too great 
greediness for the preservation of game, and in their 
mercenary love for those all but sacred birds, the 
pheasant and the partridge, have, through the 
agency of their gamekeepers, waged such a war of 
extermination against the Falconidce, that the spar- 
row has increased beyond due bounds. And if the 
farmers, for self-protection, do no more than thin 
the numbers of the sparrow at certain seasons of the 
year, without waging a war of annihilation against 
him, they will do no more than supply the place in 
the wise economy of nature, which would have been 
filled by the carnivorous birds, which sportsmen — 
real or pretended, and especially the game preservers 
and their servants — have not allowed to find a home 
in our hills and valleys. The herring, as we all 



70 COUNTRY AND TOWN SPARROWS. 

know, is a very excellent fish ; but it is so prolific 
that a single pair produces in one season a progeny 
to be numbered by hundreds of thousands. If there 
were no check to its increase in the shape, not only of 
the fishermen, but of the whales and other fish that 
devour them by myriads, the deep sea itself would 
in the course of a score or two of years, become as 
thick as barley broth with this one form of life, to 
the exclusion of others. So of the sparrow. He 
is an excellent bird in his way. It is only when he 
becomes too many for the work to be done that the 
thinning of his numbers becomes justifiable. 







POOR TOM. 




HE "Poor Tom" whose humble story I 
am about to relate, is, although he will 
not admit the fact, a beggar. There 
is this much to be said for his denial of 
the truth, that he is to a certain extent a trader, 
and that in the summer months and the early 
autumn he does a certain amount of profitable 
business — profitable from his point of view, though 
never sufficiently remunerative to enable him to 
deal with either the tailor or the shoemaker. His 
whole attire is eleemosynary, and his raggedness, 
though doubtless very uncomfortable, is picturesque, 
and might, if any good artist happened to fall in 
with him, procure for him the honour of a sitting, 
and such reward as the pose might be worth. Tom 
is sixty-five years of age, and has a large handsome 
brown beard, striped with grey. Though I have 
known him for three or four years, I never saw him 



72 POOR TOM. 

but once without his hat on — a very battered and 
tattered one it is — and then I discovered that his 
beard was the only hirsuteness he could exhibit, 
and that his head was as devoid of hair as a tea-cup. 
His elbows peep out from his sleeves, and his toes 
from his miserable old shoes, and his general rag- 
gedness is as looped and windowed as that which 
Lear pitied and Shakespeare described. In his 
youth poor Tom was a carpenter, but he has not 
done a stroke of carpenter's work for upwards of 
forty years, having, as he says, been disabled at five- 
and-twenty by rheumatism in his right shoulder and 
hand, and in both of his feet — rheumatism so long 
neglected or so imperfectly treated as to have become 
chronic and incurable. Having no money to set up 
a shop, and no friends to help him, he betook him- 
self to the road to live by what he could pick up ; 
not perhaps without reliance upon the sweet little 
cherub already mentioned, or on the Providence 
that takes account of men as well as of sparrows. 

Poor Tom once called upon me with a basket 
of mushrooms that he had gathered in the fields, 
having a standing commission from me to give me 
the first offer of these dainties whenever he can find 
sufficient for a dish. The last time I had seen him 
prior to this visit, was about six weeks previously, 
when I had come across him in a byeway, lying by the 
side of a ditch, and very drunk indeed. I reminded 



POOR TOM. 73 

him (perhaps unnecessarily) of the fact, but as I 
had bought his mushrooms at a good price, he was 
not offended. 

" Yes," said he, ' ' I remember ; I was main 
drunk. I think I was never so drunk in all my 
life before. It was with champagne." 

" Champagne ? " I repeated incredulously. 

" Yes, champagne ; and not bad stuff neither, 
though it did make me uncommon ill." 

Tom went on to explain that there had been a large 
pic-nic party upon the hill that day, at which nearly 
two hundred people were present, dispersed in 
groups under the trees. As attendance upon pic- 
nics is part of his regular business, he was, as he 
said, " to the fore" on this occasion, to take his 
chance either of being ruthlessly driven away, as he 
sometimes is for his utter incongruity with sur- 
rounding circumstances, or of being employed in 
some way or other, or of obtaining a share of the 
broken victuals and remnants of the feast. Tom 
had been plashing about all the morning in the 
little river that winds and murmurs under the hill- 
side, and had the large basket, which is usually 
slung at his back, filled with fresh forget-me-nots, 
which he had gathered on the banks of the stream. 
Young ladies love the forget-me-not more for its 
name than for its beauty, and Tom's venture among 
the merry-makers with such an abundant supply of 



74 POOR TOM. 

a flower so suggestive to love-makers proved to be 
a success. One young gentleman gave him a 
shilling for a bunch, which he forthwith presented 
to a young lady, and such a desire for forget-me- 
nots took possession of all the other ladies, young 
and old, that the gentlemen in attendance, as in 
gallantry and duty bound, made all haste to gratify 
their wishes. The consequence was that Tom's 
forget-me-nots were speedily sold at highly remu- 
nerative prices, and he found himself in possession 
of nearly twelve shillings. " It was the best day's 
work I ever did in my life," said Tom ; " nor was 
this all. Pic-nic people, though they generally 
bring plenty of wine or ale with them, always 
manage to forget to bring water; and this party 
had not a drop. One of the ladies asked me if I 
could get some, and a gentleman sitting next to 
her on the grass offered to give me a bottle of 
champagne in exchange for six bottles of pure cold 
water. They had the water, and I had the wine. 
I had heard of champagne, but I had never tasted 
a drop of it in my life. They all laughed to see me 
drinking it. Let them laugh as wins, thought I, as 
I sat under a tree by myself, and drank." 

1 ' You liked it, of course ? " 

" Liked it ! It was glorious, and did me a power 
of good ; leastways, I think it would have done 
if I had stuck to the one bottle. But I amused the 



POOR TOM. 75 

gentlemen, I suppose, and made fun for them, so 
they gave me more, and more again upon the top 
of that, till my head began to spin and swim, and I 
felt that I was going to be very unwell. How I 
got away I don't remember, but I was main ill, and 
after a while I fell asleep where you saw me. When 
I woke it was pitch dark, and I heard the church 
clock at Darkham strike three in the morning." 

" Darkham," said I ; " where* s that ? You mean 
Dorking." 

' ' No," replied Tom, very dictatorially, and as if 
sure of his point. Some people say Dorking, others 
say Darking, I say Darkham." 

Tom had begun to interest me, for if I have a 
favourite hobby it is philology, and I had long had 
a suspicion that the modern name of this pretty 
little town was not the correct one. 

" Did you ever hear any one else call it Dark- 
ham?" 

" Yes, my father and my mother, and scores of 
people. There is Mickleham, and Effingham, and 
Brockham, and Bookham, and Darkham, all in a 
string, as I might say." 

" Have you any idea what Darkham means ? 
Bookham means the home among the beech- 
trees, Brockham the home by the brook, and Effing- 
ham is probably Upping home ; but what is Dark- 
ham ? " 



7Q POOR TOM. 

" The dark home," said Toin, as if the question 
were settled. 

" No, that's not it. Darag or Darach is the old 
Celtic for oak, and Darkham is the home among 
the oak-trees." 

ee You've got it now/' said Tom. " That's it for 
sartain." 

I have had many talks with Tom, and have taken 
considerable interest in his humble fortunes. As 
soon as the leaves fall from the trees and the 
nights begin to grow frosty, Tom retires from the 
busy world into his Winter Palace. That Palace 
is the workhouse, or rather the workhouse in- 
firmary ; for Tom cannot work if he would, and his 
rheumatism or poor man's gout — he does not ex- 
actly know to which of the two names his inveterate 
malady is properly entitled— requires the treatment 
that none but the parish doctor and the parish 
funds will supply. But as soon as the cuckoo is 
heard in the woods, Tom, after a hybernation which 
he has shared with the flies, the bees, the dormice, 
and others of God's creatures, which are mercifully 
permitted to sleep all through the season when 
no food is to be found for them, emerges once 
again into the light of day to ply his vocation. 
He looks so very miserable, that many kind- 
hearted people stop him on the road, and give him 
either of their own poverty or of their riches the 






POOR TOM. 77 

wherewithal to make himself a little more com- 
fortable. But he never asks for charity. For this 
reason he denies being a beggar — a figment,, a 
white lie, a suppressio veri, whatever it may be 
called, which does no harm to anybody, while it 
administers very sensibly to the little pride that the 
world, and old age, and hard struggles have left in 
him. It is his wish to earn an honest subsistence, 
and he does his best in that direction, and with a 
very patient, humble, and uncomplaining spirit. 
The first objects of his solicitude as soon as he is 
emancipated from his winter thraldom are the 
primrose roots and flowers, with which he drives 
his small bargains in the towns and villages with 
people who want to ornament their little front gar- 
dens or their cottage windows, and which he sells 
for what he can get — for a penny or a halfpenny a 
root, or for a piece of bread, or, better still, for a 
pair of old boots or shoes, or any cast-off garment 
that may be too ragged for the poorest of the poor, 
but which is not utterly valueless to him. He 
also collects herbs, or, as he calls them, " yarbs," 
either for the garden or for the use of the poor 
people and the notable housewives among them, who 
have faith in simples for the treatment and cure of 
burns and scalds, or other simple maladies. Though, 
unlike Happy Jack, he cannot 

Ope his leathern scrip, 
And show us simples of a thousand names, 



78 POOR TOM. 

he can display some dozens of varieties in his basket, 
and can tell what they are supposed to be good 
for. One day he got an order from a village 
apothecary for cart-loads of groundsel, if he could 
collect as much, and was busy on the job for a whole 
fortnight. It was wanted for a military hospital for 
the purpose of making poultices. But he never 
received so extensive an order again. Ferns and 
orchids were other sources of income, and last, but 
by no means the least, were watercresses and mush- 
rooms. Tom has no faith in the new-fangled ideas 
about mushrooms, and does not believe that there 
is more than one kind in England that is edible. 
"Mushrooms/' said he, with a conservatism strongly 
opposed to the radicalism of the present day, that 
will not allow us our ancient faith even in fungi, 
" have been growing- in the English meadows for a 
thousand years, and if there were more than one 
sort good for eating*, do you think our grandfathers 
and their grandfathers would not have found it out ? 
"No, no ! " he added, with strong emphasis, (l there 
is only one mushroom ; all the others are toadstools ; 
and I won't believe otherwise if all the doctors in 
England says the contrary." 

There is a suspicion afloat, that in his early man- 
hood, and when he first took to the road, Tom got 
into trouble, and was had before a justice of the 
peace for poaching. But the suspicion is too vague 



POOR TOM. 79 

and shadowy to merit much notice. I have tried more 
than once to get him on the subject of the Game 
Laws, as affecting the rural population ; but he has 
always evaded it, and expressed no opinion, or even 
made a remark, except " that he did not understand 
about that." Tom can read, and has a small dog's- 
eared and very shabby-looking and well-thumbed 
Bible, which he carries in his basket, and studies 
every Sunday in the fields, out of the public path 
somewhere, when the weather is fine, and he has 
enough bread and cheese or scraps of victuals in his 
pocket to serve for his dinner. He never goes to 
church in the summer when he is a free man, having 
been, he says, turned from the door of a church 
some years ago by the beadle, who told him he 
was much too dirty to enter. " Perhaps what he 
said was true," observed Tom, when he told me the 
story ; " but I thought all the same, that I might 
have been allowed to go into a corner. Howsom- 
ever, I went away, and sat upon a tombstone to 
rest myself out of the beadle's sight, and hear the 
organ play, and thought that, maybe, when I was 
put under the mould, I might be as clean as Mr. 
Beadle or Mr. Parson, or any of the grand folks in 
the pews ! And I think so still, though, as I said, 
it was a good many years ago, and I was not so near 
the mould as I am now." But though Tom avoids 
church in summer, he regularly attends the service 



80 POOR TOM. 

in the Union during the winter months, and seems, 
from the manner in which he speaks of the sermons 
he hears, to be quite as good a Christian as his 
betters. 

The last time I saw Tom he was on his way to the 
Union workhouse for the winter, when he showed me 
the ticket of admission duly signed by the relieving 
officer. 

" I am afraid," he said, " I shall not come out 
again : though I shall be glad to see the primroses 
and hear the cuckoo once more. I don't think I 
have been a very bad man, though once, and only 
once in my life, I had a pheasant for dinner." 

I thought Tom was going to talk about that 
poaching business at last ; but he hesitated, and 
pulled up suddenly. 

" No ! I have not been a very bad man ; and if 
I have not worked as hard as other people, it is 
because I have not been able to work." 

" Well, Tom ! " I said, <( your life has been a 
hard one, I have no doubt. But I never knew 
much harm of you ; and I suppose that, like the 
rest of us, you have had your joys as well as your 
sorrows." 

" There was a young woman," he said — but he 
did not wipe his eye with his cuff, nor whimper — 
" who was very fond of me, and she died when I 
was twenty and she was eighteen. Since that time 



POOR TOM. 81 

the best things I have known in the world have 
been the sunshine and the warm weather. It is 
very hard to be poor, and old, and cold. Cold, 
as far as I know, is the worst of all — worse than 
hunger ; at least Fve found it so. And if it were 
not for the cold, I don't think Fd go to the Union 
at all, but would try and jog along in the winter as 
I do in the summer." 

Poor Tom, it will be seen, though he has a cer- 
tain amount of pride, has not a very high spirit ; — 
how could he have with such a hopeless battle to 
fight ? — and by no means despises the workhouse, or 
thinks it derogatory to his manly dignity as some 
of the hard-working poor do, to depend upon it for 
assistance. Without its kindly hand, however, he 
would doubtless die in the cold December — of 
" serum on the brain," as the parish doctors have 
lately taken it into their heads to call starvation. 
So small blame be to him for going into it when he 
must, and for coming out of it when he can. In 
spite of his last fit of despondency, I hope to see 
the old fellow out again in the spring, along with 
his favourite primroses, listening to the cuckoo, 
gathering cresses, and drawing such comfort out 
of the sunshine as Diogenes may have done, but 
without the misanthropy, that perhaps was not real, 
even in Diogenes. 






A LOVEH OF TEEES. 




people in the world take such intel- 
lectual pleasure in trees as those of the 
British islands. The squirearchy and 
aristocracy, in their beautiful country- 
houses, find about as much enjoyment in their an- 
cestral oaks and over-arching avenues of elm, lime, 
beech, and chesnut, as they do in the picture gal- 
leries and libraries, or the heirlooms of their race. 
The overthrow by storm, or natural decay of an 
ancient and picturesque tree, in their domain, 
afflicts them more than the loss of a favourite 
horse, and almost as much as that of a member 
of the family. None but the veriest scapegrace 
and spendthrift, unless reduced to the direst ex- 
tremity of pecuniary misfortune, will sell his or- 
namental timber without a struggle. The class 
immediately below them, who are proprietors of 
no paternal acres, and who pass their long and 
useful lives in striving to amass fortunes, perhaps 



A LOVER OF TREES. 83 

i;o build up a county family, if their ambition points 
that way, as it often does, have in the intervals 
when even the busiest and most plodding of men 
must unbend, delightful visions of a coming time, 
when in the evening of their days, they too may 
sit under the shadow of their own vines or figtrees, 
" with none to make them afraid." Perchance on 
a holiday visit to the country, they may stand at 
the lodge-gate of some patrician mansion, and, look- 
ing wistfully up the shady avenue, exclaim, like the 
wanderer in the Pleasures of Hope, "■ Oh, that for 
me some home like this would smile ! " Descending 
yet another step in the social ladder, the clerk, the. 
shopkeeper, and the mechanic, escaping from the 
smoke and moil of the over-populous city, where their 
daily lives are spent, rush to the green fields and the 
shady trees ; with an appetite sharpened by months, 
or it may sometimes happen of years of enforced ab- 
stinence from all enjoyment of the manifold beauties 
of the country. The French have a great love of 
flowers, but not that passionate admiration for trees 
which is a part of our British idiosyncracy. The 
Americans have not yet arrived at that point in 
social history, when antiquity, whether it be in the 
shape of a tree or an edifice, claims respect or ad- 
miration, and find the soil of their fertile continent, 
too greatly encumbered with trees that are neither 
useful nor ornamental, to be justified in allowing 



84 A LOVER OF TREES. 

forests to occupy tlie space that ought to be devoted 
to corn-fields. The tastes and habits, no less than 
the democratic principles of the people, do not, and 
are not likely to lead to the growth and establish- 
ment of great rural and aristocratic families among 
them, and such luxury as wealth commands finds 
among the Americans its field of display in the city 
rather than in the country. I once invited a dis- 
tinguished American, on a visit to London, to dine 
at the Star and Garter, at Richmond, and, as a 
matter of course, directed his attention to the 
beautiful natural panorama that is visible from the 
terrace. Accustomed to admire the sylvan loveliness 
and umbrageous verdure of the scene, with the clear 
Thames flowing through the landscape like a thread 
of gold over a tissue of green velvet, I expected 
that the American, as a man of taste, would sympa- 
thise in my feelings. "Yes," said the American; 
' ' it is f handsome ' enough, but it seems to me that 
it sadly wants clearing ! " 

The English were always lovers of trees. With- 
out going back to the time of the Druids to prove 
the fact, or to the entries in Doomsday Book to cor- 
roborate it ; but coming down to the later days of 
Chaucer, Spenser, and our ballad literature, there 
are found such frequent and joyous allusions to the 
" merry green wood," in all these early singers, as 
to make it evident that a life in the forest was 



A LOVER OF TREES. 85 

one which had peculiar charms in the imagination 
of the people. The opening stanza of the old 
ballad of Eobin Hood and Guy of Gisborne — 

When shawes are sheen and straddes full faire, 

And leaves both large and long, 
"Pis merry walking in faire forest, 

To hear the sweet birds' song— 

expresses the popular sympathy with the sights and 
sounds of Nature,, which is one of the healthiest 
components of the English character. 

The long and sanguinary civil wars of the Red 
and White Roses, that ruined so many of the fore- 
most English nobles and put new men in their 
places, who did not value the ancestral trees, except 
for what they would fetch as timber ; the disposses- 
sion of the monks from their cosy monasteries by 
Henry VIII. ; and the new series of commotions, 
wars, and revolutions that began under Charles I., 
and only ended with the flight of James II., pro- 
duced disastrous effects, not only . upon the orna- 
mental trees that are the delight of the landed 
aristocracy, but upon all the woodland districts 
and forests of England. On the restoration of 
Charles II., when men's minds had calmed down, 
after the long perturbation of civil strife, and 
people had leisure to bestow their attention upon 
the minor matters that had been neglected when 
the state itself was in danger, it became a com- 



m A LOVER OF TREES. 

mon subject of remark and complaint that many 
previous generations had been prodigal and waste- 
ful in the matter of trees, and that while war and 
cupidity had been busily engaged in cutting 1 them 
down, nobody had been replacing the loss by plant- 
ing. It was even feared, so great was the scarcity 
of oak, that the country might, in the event of a 
foreign war, find itself without timber for the con- 
struction of a navy to maintain its vaunted supre- 
macy of the seas ; a fear that in Charles's reign 
was justified by the appearance in the Medway of 
a hostile fleet of Dutch vessels-of-war, recalling to 
mind the long previous boast of Admiral Yan 
Tromp, with his broom at his masthead, that 
he would sweep the navies of England from the 
ocean. But, whenever a great work has to be 
done, a man is found to do it. And so it hap- 
pened in this case. The hour came, and the man 
along with it ; not in the shape of a great or de- 
spotic king, emperor, or conqueror, whom to hear 
was to obey; not in the shape of a parliament 
or a legislature to frame a law and compel obedi- 
ence to it; but in that of a quiet, studious, 
country gentleman, with a book in his hand, of 
which the facts and the logic were sufficient to con- 
vince the nation that a very important duty had 
been too long neglected. The remedy followed 
speedily upon the public proclamation of the eviL 



A LOVER OF TREES. S7 

The wealthy English landlords set vigorously to 
work in the systematic plantation of trees, especially 
of oak, and many a noble tree now standing* in many 
a beautiful park and avenue, and many a shady elm 
by the road side and in the green lanes of England, 
owe their propagation to the taste thus stimulated. 
The country gentleman, who had sense and pa- 
triotism enough to lead his countrymen to this 
useful and elegant pursuit, was John Evelyn, of 
Sayes Court near Deptford; and the book was 
Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees and the Pro- 
pagation of Timber in his Majesty's Dominions. 
The volume had been previously read before the 
Eoyal Society, of which the author was a prominent 
member, having been suggested by certain inquiries 
addressed to that learned body by the Commissioners 
of the Navy, and was ordered to be printed at its 
cost, being the first book that ever received such 
an honour at its hands. 

Before speaking further of the contents of a 
volume that was destined in due time to improve 
the face of " merry England," and make it look as 
merry as it did in the early days of the Norman 
Kings, when Robin Hood and his men roamed 
through the glades of Sherwood, and when the New 
Forest rang with the echoes of bugle horns ; a short 
account of the amiable author may prove interesting 
to a generation that knows little of him but his 



88 A LOVER OF TREES. 

name. He was born at Wotton, near Dorking in 
Surrey, the second of the three sons of Richard 
Evelyn of that place ; a country gentleman with a 
rental of about four thousand pounds a-year, which 
was equivalent in that day to a rental of at least 
ten thousand pounds in our own. John Evelyn 
and his elder brother George, studied together at 
Oxford. On leaving the university, they both en- 
tered themselves as students of the Middle Temple, 
not so much with the view of studying law, as of 
obtaining the social position of barristers in ad- 
dition to that of country gentlemen. Neither of 
the brothers appears to have had much liking for the 
law, or to have made any proficiency in it. After 
the death of Richard Evelyn from dropsy in 1641, 
George betook himself to Wotton, to act the squire, 
and John made a tour on the continent, and served 
for a short time as a volunteer in the king's army 
in Flanders. Returning home towards the end of 
the year, he went to live at Wotton with his brother, 
to whom he was much attached, making occasional 
visits to London, where he relates that he ' c studied 
a little ; but danced and fooled a great deal more." 
With the design, it would appear, of avoiding all 
part in the political troubles of the times, a royalist 
at heart, though not very enthusiastic in admiration 
of the character or policy of Charles I., he retired 
once more to the continent in 1634, and spent his 



A LOVER OF TREE 8. 89 

time in travelling through Belgium, France, and 
Italy, noting every thing that was noteworthy, 
and storing his mind with knowledge of pictures, 
architecture, and natural history, as well as of men 
and manners. In the year 1647 he arrived in Paris, 
where he made the acquaintance of the British 
Ambassador, Sir Eichard Browne, " with whose lady 
and family," he says in his diary, " I contracted a 
great friendship, and particularly set my affections 
on his daughter. Mary Browne was very young at 
the time, just turned fifteen." Evelyn appears to 
have thriven well in his wooing, for he records in 
his diary, just thirty- six days after his first mention 
of the young lady, that he was married to her in 
the Chapel of the Embassy, by Dr. Earle, chaplain 
to the Prince of Wales. Recalled to England by 
the state of his private affairs, which required his 
attention, he left his juvenile wife with her father 
and mother, and did not rejoin her till a year 
and a-half had elapsed. Among the very first 
places which he visited on his return to England 
was Sayes Court, Deptford, the country house 
of Sir Richard Browne, which he afterwards in- 
herited in right of his wife, and where, during a 
long and happy life, he indulged himself in those 
favourite pursuits of gardening and planting, which 
enabled him to write like a master of the art, and 
to produce a book of such authority as Sylva. Though 



90 A LOVER OF TREE S. 

he had strong political ideas, hated Cromwell, and 
adored the memory of Charles I., without ever 
having expressed any great enthusiasm for the royal 
person during the king's lifetime, he found it 
politic and necessary to walk warily during the days 
of the Commonwealth, and to avoid getting either 
himself or his estates into trouble by his plain- 
spokenness. In this sage resolution he persevered 
— a suspected, but an unmolested citizen — and in 
his quiet unobtrusive manner, paid all requisite 
respect and obedience to his de facto rulers, not 
without an occasional sigh, as his Diary shows, for 
the return of the ruler de jure. 

On the 3rd of September, 1658, he records, with 
great apparent satisfaction, i( died that arch-rebel, 
Oliver Cromwell, called Protector." He also de- 
scribes the magnificent and truly regal funeral 
twenty-one days afterwards; when the body of 
Oliver was conveyed in state from Somerset House 
to Westminster Abbey, adding, as if he highly en- 
joyed the remembrance, "but it was the joyfullest 
funeral I ever saw, for there were none that cried but 
the dogs, which the soldiers hooted away with a bar- 
barous noise, drinking and smoking tobacco in the 
streets as they went." On the restoration of Charles 
II., Evelyn was taken into the high favour and confi- 
dence of the king*, and remained during his whole 
reign on terms of familiar intercourse with that 



A LOVER OF TREES. 91 

easy-going personage, who fascinated everybody 
with whom he came in contact. 

John Evelyn was not in a position to require 
offices of emolument from the state, but he accepted 
some offices of trust and honour. He was a 
commissioner for taking care of the sick and 
wounded in the Dutch war; a commissioner of 
Greenwich Hospital ; a commissioner for the rebuild- 
ing of St. Paul's Cathedral ; a commissioner for the 
regulation of the Mint ; a commissioner for the im- 
provement and widening of the streets of London, 
and one of the original Lords of Trade and Planta- 
tions — the precursors of the present Board of Trade. 
But none of these public duties, onerous as many 
of them were, interfered with his planting and 
gardening, or with his enjoyment of the intellec- 
tual and convivial society of the time. He was 
personally acquainted with all the celebrated men 
of the day — except with those who, in his opinion, 
were defiled by their revolutionary politics, and by 
the support they had given to Oliver Cromwell — 
and familiar with all the popular literature of the 
day, in which, it may be remarked, that the works 
neither of Shakespeare nor of Milton — those great 
particular stars in our modern firmament — were in- 
cluded : for the fashionables of that age had scarcely 
heard of the one, and only knew the other as a 
rebel. The most famous poet of the period was 



92 A LOVER OF TREES. 

Abraham Cowley — ' ' the melancholy Cowley/' as he 
called himself — betwixt whom and Evelyn, though 
Evelyn was far too wary a man and too true a phi- 
losopher to be melancholy, there was much congeni- 
ality of taste, more especially in the matter of gar- 
dens. To the third edition of Sylva, he prefixed a 
letter and a poem addressed to him by Cowley. In 
the letter, dated in 1666, Cowley declared that he 
never had any desire so strong or so like cove- 
tousness as that which he still had, and always had, 
of being master of a small house and a large garden 
with moderate conveniences attached to them ; and 
that he might there dedicate the remainder of his life 
to culture and the study of nature. ' ' I know," he 
added, apostrophising Evelyn, " nobody that pos- 
sesses more private happiness than you do in your 
garden ; and no man who makes his happiness more 
public by a free communication of the art and know- 
ledge of it to others. All that I myself am yet able 
to do is only to recommend to mankind the search 
of that felicity which you instruct them how to find 
and enjoy." In the accompanying poem, in praise 
of gardens and of the delights which the philosophic 
mind may find in rural pursuits, Cowley represented 
that " God the first garden made, and the first city 
Cain," a passage that must have been in the mind 
of William Cowper more than a century afterwards, 
when, with far inferior point, he wrote, " God made 



A LOVER OF TREES. 93 

the country, and man made the town." Both the 
poet and the philosopher were of one mind on the 
subject. ' ( Methinks," said Cowley — 

I see great Diocletian walk 
In the Salomaia garden's noble shade, 
Which by his own imperial hands was made. 
I see him smile methinks, as he does talk 
With the ambassadors, who come, in vain, 
T' entice him to a throne again. 
If I, my friends (saith he), should to you show 
All the delights which in these gardens grow, 
'Tis likelier much that you should with me stay, 
Than 'tis that you should carry me away. 

The two friends, with dispositions and tastes so 
much alike, were not destined to see much of each 
other, for in less than a twelvemonth after these 
lines were written, the poet died of a neglected 
cold, which he had caught when working in his 
hay-field, near Chertsey. 

Evelyn, in his Diary, under date of the 1st of 
August, 1667, records that he that day received 
"the sad news of Abraham Cowley's death, that 
incomparable poet and virtuous man, and my very 
dear friend.-" Evelyn continued to reside at Sayes 
Court, and occasionally in London; one of the 
busiest men of his age, although one who, to the 
world, appeared among the least busy, until his 
seventieth year, when, by the death of his elder 
brother without heirs, he entered into possession of 



94 A LOVER OF TREES. 

the paternal estate of Wotton. Here he had even 
better scope than at Sayes Court for his favourite 
avocations, and continued planting and improving 
for sixteen years longer, when he died in his eighty- 
sixth year, leaving his affectionate wife, Mary 
Browne, to mourn his loss for three years, and a 
young grandson who succeeded to the property. 
Evelyn had few sorrows during his long* and blame- 
less life but those which happen to all who live to 
advanced years, such as the loss of beloved children 
and dear friends. One of his most serious afflictions 
(happy he that has none greater) befell him, in an 
evil hour, when he let his residence at Sayes Court 
to an illustrious foreigner. On becoming possessed 
of Wotton, the seat of his ancestors, in the year 
1690, he was in the habit of letting the inferior but 
still very beautiful domain of Sayes Court, and had 
found a tenant in Admiral Benbow, about whom 
and whose achievements English sailors continue to 
sing to this day, 

Come all yon brave fellows wherever you've been, 
Let us drink to the health of our king and our queen, 
And another good health to the girls that we know, 
And a third in remembrance of Admiral Benbow. 

Admiral Benbow, to whom the place was let un- 
furnished for three years, on condition that he would 
keep up the darling garden as Evelyn had left it, 
was not a tenant to the philosopher's mind; partly 



A LOVER OF TREES. 95 

"because he was not "polite" (sailors in those days 
were rough men, even in the highest ranks) , but 
principally because he neglected the trees, and 
otherwise mismanaged the garden. His next 
tenant was no other than " the Czar of Muscovy/' as 
he was then called, the "Peter the Great" of Russian 
history, who came to London in 1698 to study the 
art of shipbuilding. He desired to live near Deptford 
Dockyard, and was a still greater thorn in the flesh 
of poor Evelyn. The philosopher was approaching 
his seventy-ninth year, and all the philosophy left 
in him was sorely tried by the ruthless proceed- 
ings of the vulture which he had unluckily admitted 
into his dovecote. The Czar desired to come 
and go, to and from, the dockyard by the 
shortest route from Sayes Court. Not finding- 
such a route he made it by cutting a hole through 
the wall of Evelyn's domain. But to destroy a 
wall is a small matter, for a wall can be repaired or 
rebuilt, and it is nothing but a question of money ; 
but who shall repair a tree? Who shall make 
good the destruction of an ancient and picturesque 
hedge of holly? or any other hedge that it has 
taken more than a lifetime to bring to per- 
fection? This was what the Czar did. He was 
fond of robust exercise, and of trundling a wheel- 
barrow full of stones ; and in pursuit of this latter 
pleasure in his own grounds (for the time being, 



96 A LOVER OF TREES. 

and as long as he paid the rent) he made a large 
gap through the holly hedge, that was dearest of all 
other things in and about Sayes Court to the heart of 
John Evelyn. " Is there under the heavens," said 
the philosopher, in the last edition of his Sylva, the 
fourth which he lived to see through the press, " any 
more glorious and refreshing object than an im- 
pregnable hedge of about four hundred feet in 
length, nine feet high, and five in diameter, which 
I can still show at this time in the year in my ruined 
garden at Sayes Court (thanks to the Czar of Mus- 
covy), glittering with its armecf and variegated 
leaves ? It mocks the rudest assaults of the weather, 
beasts, and hedge-breakers." The "beast and 
hedge-breaker" — he was certainly one of the two 
in Evelyn's estimation, if not both — did other and 
more reparable damage, altogether to the amount 
of a hundred and fifty pounds, which was assessed 
after the Czar's departure, and paid by the govern- 
ment of William III, The house did not fare 
better than the garden, though Evelyn did not care 
much about any damage done to the former, pro- 
vided he were paid for it. His man-servant, left in 
charge, wrote to his master that the house was full 
of people, "right nasty;" that the Czar slept in a 
room next the library ; that he dined twice a day, 
at ten in the morning and six in the afternoon ; that 
he changed his dress several times daily (from that 



A LOVE It OF TREES. 97 

of a workman to that of a gentleman), and that one 
day, when the king was expected, " the best parlour 
had been got pretty clean for him ; " that is to say, 
as clean as it was possible to make it with such a 
barbarian upon the premises. 

Evelyn's book, presented to the world under the 
patronage of the King 1 , the Eoyal Society, and of 
xi Society" itself — a power in those days quite as 
great as in our own — was a decided if not a rapid 
success. It is not written in so easy and natural 
a style as his Diary, which he did not intend for 
publication, and abounds with learned words de- 
rived more immediately from the Latin, many of 
which, in an advertisement prefixed to the work, he 
thought it necessary to explain to the uninitiated 
public. Among the words which he thought might 
loe obscure and unfamiliar were several which, in 
our time, are very old and well-known acquain- 
tances; such as "avenue," "bulb," " compost," 
P culinary," " culture," " esculent," " exotic," " fer- 
mentation," t( films," "homogeneous," "heteroge- 
neous," " irrigation," "laboratory," " mural," " par- 
terre," "perennial," and "vernal." Among the 
" pedantic " words which he thought it necessary to 
explain, and which neither his example nor that 
of any one else has yet naturalised in English 
literature, are " ablaqueation," the laying bare 
of the roots; " frondation," the stripping of the 

H 



93 A LOVER OF TREES. 

boughs ; " hyeniation," production in winter ; ei ich- 
nography," tlie ground plan ; " letation," dung ; 
" lixivium," lee ; " olitory," belonging to the kitchen 
garden ; " stercoration," manuring with dung ; and 
"tonsile," that which may be shorn or clipped. 
Among the words that he used and did not explain, 
because he considered them obvious, are many that 
are not at all obvious to his readers of the nineteenth 
century: such as cc capidescent," " surbated," "ligne- 
scent," " improsperity," ( ( insititious," f f politure," 
1 ( stramental," " subductition," u suberous," "pro- 
cerity," "lux," and " emoluniental." 

As the main object of the work was to induce 
English gentlemen to plant oak trees for the service 
of the State in the event of war, and the secondary 
object was the plantation of other trees for orna- 
ment and beauty, the author, as a matter of course, 
began with the oak as the tree par excellence : not 
only, he said, "because it was held in high esteem 
by c that wise and glorious people/ the Romans;" 
but because it surpassed all other trees whatso- 
ever for the building of ships in general, and 
particularly for being tough, bending well, strong, 
and not too heavy, nor easily admitting water." In 
his instructions for the planting, the culture, the 
transplanting, and the management of this tree, 
Evelyn invariably writes like an adept ; and though 
sometimes historical, classical, and poetical in his 



A LOVER OF TREES. 99 

allusions and quotations, is in the main scientific 
and practical. " To enumerate," he says, " the in- 
comparable uses of this tree were needless, but so 
precious was the esteem of it, that there was an ex- 
press law among the Twelve Tables concerning the 
very gathering of the acorns (oak-corns), though 
they should be found fallen into another man's 
ground. The land and the sea do sufficiently speak 
for the improvement of this excellent material. 
Houses and ships, cities and navies are built with 
it." And not only in his estimation was the oak 
timber to be admired for its uses, but the bark, the 
acorns, the leaves, its very disease, the gall, were 
each and all of utility to mankind. " Of the gall," 
he says, " is made spa water. It is the ground and 
basis of several dies, especially of the sadder colours. 
Nor must I forget ink composed of galls, copperas, 
gum-arabic, and claret, or French wine. Of the 
very moss of the oak, that which is white composes 
the choicest cypress powder, which is esteemed good 
for the head ; but impostors familiarly vend other 
mosses under this name, as they do the fungi, ex- 
cellent in haemorrhages and fluxes, for the true 
agaric, to the great scandal of physic. Young red 
oaken leaves, decocted in wine, make an excellent 
gargle for a sore mouth ; and almost any part of 
this tree is sovereign against fluxes in general, and 
where astringents are proper. The dew that im- 



100 A LOVER OF TREES. 

pearls the leaves in May, insolated, meteorises, and 
sends up a liquor which is of admirable effect in 
ruptures. The liquor issuing about between the 
bark, which looks like treacle, has many sovereign 
virtues; and a water distilled from the acorns is 
good against the pthisick and stitch in the side, 
heals inward ulcers, and breaks the stone ; nay, the 
acorns themselves, eaten fasting, kill the worms. 
The evals of oak, beaten and mingled into honey, 
cures the carbuncle, to say nothing of polypods and 
other excrescences ; of it innumerable remedies are 
composed, noble antidotes and syrups." And as if 
all these virtues were not sufficient in the good 
man's estimation to endow his favourite trees, he 
wound up his eulogy by stating, what he did not 
expressly say he believed though he left the 
reader to infer his credence, "that it is reported 
that the very shade of the tree is so wholesome, 
that the sleeping or lying under it becomes a pre- 
sent remedy to paralytics ! " 

The elm, dear to all lovers of English scenery and 
poetry, comes next in Evelyn's list. " I know," he 
says, in his magniloquent way, " of no tree among 
all the forest, becoming the almost interminate 
contananza of walks and vistas, comparable to this 
majestic plant. . . . The elm is, by reason of its 
aspiring and tapering growth, the least offensive to 
corn and pasture grounds, to both of which and to 



A LOVER OF TREES. 101 

cattle it affords a benign shade, defence, and agree- 
able ornament." It will serve no purpose to enu- 
merate, as Evelyn does, all the manufacturing and 
commercial uses of this tree, and the various tools, 
implements, and commodities which may be made 
of it. He incidentally mentions the coffin as one of 
them ; the coffin, which to the mournful imagination 
of poor Thomas Hood in his beautiful poem of " The 
Elm Tree," seemed the only manufacture for which 
its timber was designed : — 

Ah well the abounding elm may grow 

In hedge and field so rife, 
In forest, copse, and wooded park, 

Amid the city's strife, 
For every hour that passes by 

Shall end a human life. 

Evelyn looked at things more cheerfully, and 
found the elm beautiful and useful for the living, 
and, like the oak, a plant in all its parts of high 
medicinal virtue. ' ' The green leaf of the elms con- 
tused," he informed his readers, "heals a green 
wound or cut, and boiled with the bark consolidates 
fractured bones. All the parts of this tree are ab- 
stersive, and therefore sovereign for the consoli- 
dating wounds, and assuage the pains of the gout. 
The bark, decocted in common water to almost the 
consistence of a syrup, adding a third part of aqua 
vitse, is a most admirable remedy for the Ischiadica 



102 A LOVER OF TREES. 

(gout in the hip) , the place being well rubbed and 
chafed, near the fire." 

The beech tree was not so great a favourite with 
Mr. Evelyn as the elm. " In the valleys where they 
stand warm and in consort, they will, he says, grow 
to a stupendous procerity (height) , though the soil 
be stony and very barren ; also upon the declivity, 
sides, and tops of high hills, and chalky mountains 
especially, for though they thrust not down such 
deep and numerous roots as the oak, and grow to 
vast trees, they will strangely insinuate their roots 
into the bowels of those seemingly impenetrable 
places. The beech serves for various uses of the 
housewife : — 

Beech makes the chest, the bed, and the joint stools, 
Beech makes the boards, the platter and the bowls." 

But with these and other such exceptions, Evelyn 
condemned the beech as timber. "Indeed," he 
says, "I can hardly call it timber." He nevertheless 
considers it in every respect a highly respectable 
and useful tree. cc I must not omit," he says, "to 
praise the mast (the nuts) which fats our swine and 
deer, and hath in some families even supported man 
with bread. Chios endured a memorable siege by 
the benefit of beech-mast, and in some parts of 
France they now grind it in mills. It affords a 
sweet oil which the people eat willingly. But there 



A LOVER OF TREES. 103 

is yet another benefit which this tree presents us, 
that its very leaves, which makes a most agreeable 
canopy all the summer, being gathered about ' the 
Fall/ 1 and somewhat before they are much frost- 
bitten, afford the best and easiest mattresses in the 
world to lie on under our quilts, instead of straw, 
because, besides their tenderness and loose-lying 
together, they continue sweet for seven or eight 
years, long before which time straw becomes musty 
and hard. They are thus used by divers persons of 
quality in Dauphiny; and in Switzerland I have 
sometimes lain on them to my great refreshment. . 
. . . The kernels of the mast are greedily devoured 
by squirrels, mice, and, above all, by dormice, who, 
harbouring in the hollow trees, grow so fat that in 
some countries abroad they take infinite numbers 
of them, I suppose to eat. What relief they give 
to thrushes, blackbirds, and fieldfares everybody 
knows." 

Evelyn had no taste for philology, or he might 
have recorded that the practice of our Anglo-Saxon 
ancestors of writing on the bark of the " buch," or 
"buck" (the beech tree), gave the German and the 
English languages the words, iC buch " and "book." 



1 The Americans claim this word as their own, a claim 
which cannot be allowed. It is good old English, and far 
better than the modern " Autumn." 



104 A LOVER OF TREES, 

The many picturesque clumps and clusters of 
beeches in various parts of England are well-known, 
and few Londoners are unacquainted either with the 
Burnham beeches near Windsor , or the Knockholt 
beeches in Kent. 

Evelyn, though he loved all trees for some quality 
or other, had but little good to say of the "birch," 
which he stigmatised, chiefly for its timber, as de- 
spicable, or for the elder, which he considered to 
be "despicable and vulgar." The ash — of which 
the old song, a favourite of Charles II., says : — 

Oh, the oak and the ash, and the bonnie ivy tree, 
They nourish at home in my own country — 

stood high in Evelyn's estimation. 

' ' The husbandman," he says, ' ' cannot be without 
the ash for his carts, ladders, and other tackling, 
from the pike to the plough, spear and bow, for of 
ash were they formerly made, and therefore reckoned 
amongst those woods which, after a long tension, 
has a natural spring and recovers its position; so 
that in peace or war it is a wood in highest request. 
In short, so useful and profitable is this tree (next 
to the oak), that every prudent lord of a manor 
should employ an acre of ground into ash c*r acorns 
to every twenty acres of other land, since in as 
many years it would be worth more than the land 
itself." He also finds as many medicinal virtues in 
the ash as in the oak. ' ' There is," he says, ( ' an 



A LOVER OF TREES. 105 

oil extracted from the ash, which is excellent to 
recover the hearing, some drops of it being dis- 
tilled warm into the ears. For the caries, or rot of 
the bones, for tooth-ache, pains in the kidneys, and 
for the spleen, the anointing therewith is most 
sovereign." 

The lime or linden tree, which is now a greater 
favourite in England than it was in Evelyn's time, 
and which, in the poetry and romance of the Ger- 
mans, ranks above all other trees whatever, received 
Evelyn's hearty commendation. "We send com- 
monly for this tree into Flanders and Holland, and 
it is a shameful negligence that we are no better 
provided with nurseries of a tree so choice and so 
universally acceptable. Limes ,may be planted as 
big as one's leg, their heads topped at about six or 
eight feet bole. They will thus become of all others 
the most proper and beautiful for walks, as pro- 
ducing an upright body, smooth and even bark, 
ample leaf, sweet blossom (the delight of bees) and 
a goodly shade." Recalling to mind his travels in 
Holland and Germany, he asks in triumph, " Is 
there a more ravishing or delightful object than to 
behold some entire streets, and even whole towns 
planted with these trees in even lines before the 
doors ? This is extremely fresh, of admirable effect 
against the epilepsy, for which the delicately scented 
blossoms are held prevalent, and screen the houses 



106 A LOVER OF TREES. 

both from winds, sun, and dust, than which there 
can be nothing more desirable where streets are 
much frequented." The lime, too, has its medicinal 
virtues. " The berries, reduced to powder, cure 
dysentery and stop bleeding of the nose. The dis- 
tilled water of the same is good against epilepsy, 
apoplexy, vertigo, palpitation of the heart, and 
gravel, and I am told the juice of the leaves fixes 
colours." To this may be added what Evelyn does 
not seem to have known, that linden leaves, dried 
and placed in the tea-pot, make a tea which is 
highly sodorific. In Germany, the popular cure 
for influenza, catarrh, or cold in the head, is to 
lie quietly in bed for four-and- twenty hours and 
drink copiously of hot ' Linden Thee/" The same 
remedy is common in France. 

The chesnut, perhaps, during the short season at 
the end of May and beginning of June, the most 
beautiful of the trees that adorn the English land- 
scape, the white blossoming hawthorn not excepted, 
is the only one of Evelyn's favourites which re- 
quires further notice. He is warm in praise of its 
beauty as a growing tree and of its uses as timber. 
" He observed," he says, " that this tree is so 
prevalent against cold, that where they stand, they 
preserve other trees from the injuries of the 
severest frost. I am sure that, being planted in 
hedgerows, and for avenues to our country houses, 



A LOVER OF TREE 8. 107 

they are a magnificent and a royal ornament." 
This is an opinion in which most Londoners, who 
remember the glories of Bushy Park in early sum- 
mer, will cordially coincide. Even the fruit, bitter 
as that of the horse chesnut is, finds favour in his 
philosophic eyes. " We give," he says, ce that 
fruit to our swine in England which is among the 
delicacies of princes in other countries, and of better 
nourishment to husbandmen than kohl (cabbage) 
and rusty bacon, yea, or beans to boot . . . . The 
bread made of chesnut flour is exceedingly nutritive, 
and makes women well complexioned, as I have read 
in a good author." What may interest the ladies, if 
golden locks be in fashion, and the dark possessors 
of locks that are not golden, desire to appear 
as other than they are, is the fact, given on 
Evelyn's authority alone, that te a decoction of the 
rind of the chesnut tree tinctures hair of a golden 
colour. This," he adds, without the gift of pro- 
phecy to lead him to 1871, "is esteemed a beauty in 
some countries." 

Evelyn was justified in the pride which he took 
in his Sylva, and in the additions which he con- 
tinued to make to it from time to time, until nearly 
the close of his life. In his Dedication of the third 
edition to Charles II., sixteen years after its 
first publication, he says, with pardonable self- 
appreciation, u I need not acquaint your majesty 



103 A LOVER OF TREES. 

how many millions of timber trees (besides infinite 
others) have been propagated and planted through- 
out your vast dominions at the instigation and 
by the sole direction of this work; because your 
gracious majesty has been pleased to own it publicly 
for my encouragement ; who, in all that I here pre- 
tend to say, delivers only those precepts which your 
majesty has put in practice, as has (like another 
Cyrus), by your own royal example, exceeded 
all your predecessors in the plantations you have 
made, beyond (I dare assert it) all the monarchs 
of this nation since the conquest of it. And, in- 
deed, what more august, what more worthy of your 
majesty, or more becoming our imitation, than, 
whilst you are thus solicitous for the public good, 
we pursue your majesty's great example, and by 
cultivating our decaying* woods, contribute to your 
power as to our own greatest wealth and safety." 

It is only within our own time — within a very 
few years — that Evelyn's far-sighted anxiety for the 
continuous production of material for the building of 
a great navy to maintain British supremacy in all the 
seas of the world has become a thing- of the past, a 
matter with which the present generation has no 
concern. ' ( Hearts of oak " are no longer synonymes 
or our ships or our sailors. Iron, not oak, is the 
monarch of the seas. None the less, however, is 
Evelyn's glory or the gratitude we owe him. For 



A LOVER OF TREES. 



109 



nearly two hundred years his book did noble service 
in the mode he designed ; and in other modes also. 
He taught the rural aristocracy a duty they owed to 
themselves and their country; and since his time 
they have well performed it. Nowhere in the 
world are there such fine parks and plantations as 
there are in England. 

Sayes Court, where the amiable philosopher so 
long lived and cultivated his trees, his shrubs, and 
his salads — or, as he calls them, " acetaria" — has 
long ceased to be rural, and is mural as far as houses 
and streets can make it so. Wotton, however, still 
remains, and an Evelyn still resides in it, to cultivate 
the grounds, and maintain the fair fame of an 
ancient and honourable family. 





MR. PLANT, THE ENGLISH PEASANT. 




F there be any class of the English 
people pre-eminently unknown to itself 
and to all other classes, it is that of the 
farm-labourer. The squire or other 
great landed proprietor of the neighbourhood knows 
the labourers, after a certain fashion, as he knows 
his cattle ; but of the labourer's mind he has as 
little idea as he has of that of the animal which he 
bestrides in the hunting -field. He knows the peasant 
to be a useful drudge, like the horse that draws the 
plough, but unlike the horse, feels and deplores 
that he will be a burden upon the poor-rates, 
either present or prospective. Furthermore, he 
suspects him to be a poacher ; and in his capacity of 
magistrate deals out the harshest justice (or injustice) 
towards him, if the suspicion ever comes to be 
verified. The squire's lady, and the clergyman's 
lady, and the fair matrons and spinsters of the 
Dorcas Society, or managers of the Penny Clothing 
Club, know the labourer's wife as the grateful and 



THE ENGLISH PEASANT. Ill 

very humble recipient of eleemosynary soup, coals, 
flannels, medicines, and other small mercies that are 
great in their season. The parson knows the 
labourer and his family better perhaps than anybody, 
if he be a true parson, and does his duty by his 
flock ; but it is doubtful whether even he, however 
zealous and truly christian-like he may be, penetrates 
into the arcana of the labourer's mind, or under- 
stands what the poor man really thinks of his 
condition in this world, or his prospects in the 
next. The farmer who employs him ought to know 
him better, but he does not. The farmer's only 
concern with him is on a par with the concern he 
has for his inanimate tools — for his plough, his 
spade, or his harrow, which he buys as cheaply as 
he can, uses as long as possible, and throws away 
when worn out. He employs the labourer when 
he is young and strong, and gets as much work out 
of him as he can, for the smallest price allowed by 
the custom of the neighbourhood, and quietly con- 
signs him to the tender mercies of the workhouse, 
when old age and decrepitude overtake him. To 
the dwellers in great cities the peasant is scarcely 
known, always excepting the stage peasant, who is 
the favourite dolt and clodhopper of the minor 
dramatists, the incarnation of all that is stupid, if 
he is well disposed towards society, and the incar- 
nation of all that is vicious and dangerous, if he 



112 MB. PLANT, 

has daring or desperation enough to forsake the 
paths of village virtue. 

And the peasants know as little of themselves as 
their worldly superiors. They have not even begun 
to understand, like other labouring men, the value 
of union and brotherhood in preventing wages from 
being screwed down to the starvation point. They 
do not see the necessity if labour fails them in their 
own district of trying their fortunes elsewhere. 
The law does not make them serfs, but they make 
serfs of themselves by their limpet-like tenacity in 
sticking to the parish in which they were born. 
Oliver Goldsmith may or may not have been right 
when he spoke of this class in a former day, but 
extinct is our own as " a hold peasantry, their 
country's pride;" for it is only too certain in our 
time, that if we are to look for a " bold " peasantry 
anywhere within the circuit of the British Isles, 
we must look to the border counties, to Scotland 
and to Ireland, rather than to Saxon England. In 
the southern shires, more especially, the condition 
of the peasant is virtually that of a slave. He is 
tied to his parish by circumstances too formidable 
to be overcome by such small and weak agencies 
as he can employ ; and he can only escape from it, 
to run a worse risk of pauperism in the great cities, 
that do not need him, and that have no work to 
offer that he is capable of performing. By the 



TEE ENGLISH PEASANT. 113 

hardest labour he cannot earn a decent subsistence, 
even in his youngest and strongest days. He is 
submissive to authority because he is so snubbed, 
and buffeted, and preached at, and lectured at, as 
to have become hopeless of bettering himself morally 
or physically. He is what in the south of England 
is called a " droil," and what in the north of Eng- 
land and the southern shires of Scotland is called 
a " snool," *. e.j one whose spirit is broken by daily 
oppression and continuous ill-treatment. He does 
sometimes, it is true, enter a protest against his 
life and his circumstances ; and kindly fate some- 
times takes pity on his misery, and lifts him out of 
the ill-paid drudgery which is his normal state. In 
his wild young days, when his passions are strong, 
and he entangles himself in a love affair, from 
which he has no other means of escape, he despe- 
rately enlists for a soldier, and if he be strong, well- 
behaved, and fortunate, and has received as much 
education as enables him to read, write, and work 
up in arithmetic as far as the rule of three, he may 
rise in middle age to the dignity of a sergeant. A 
French peasant under similar circumstances may 
console himself with the idea of a marshal's baton 
latent in his knapsack, but no such prospect exists 
for the British recruit. A broken constitution, and 
a pension of sixpence or ninepence a day, are his 
prospects after forty, and if he return to his native 

i 



114 ME. PLANT, 

village after this time, and is able to hedge or ditch 
or follow the plough, he is better than his fellows 
by the sixpence or ninepence aforesaid. If he be 
reckless in another direction, and takes the notion 
into his head, which he sometimes does, that the 
wild fowl and game belong as much to him as 
to any one else who can snare, shoot, or otherwise 
capture them, as they do to the squire or other 
great landed proprietor of the neighbourhood, he 
gets into difficulties more serious than love, how- 
ever illicit and unfortunate, could bring upon him, 
and is lucky indeed if he do not find himself in jail ; 
still luckier if, when he is released from it, he 
is not possessed by seven times as many devils of 
desperation as possessed him when he and the Law 
first came into conflict. Young peasants are to be 
considered particularly fortunate if they attract the 
attention of the squire or the squire's lady by their 
handiness or good looks, for they may in conse- 
quence be promoted from the paternal cottage to 
the stables or to the servants' hall of the great man- 
sion. This is almost the only road to fortune that 
is really open to the agricultural masses. Once in 
this position the way is clear before them if they 
are prudent, provident, ambitious, and not too 
honest, to amass from their savings their "vails," 
their perquisites, and their " priggings," as much 
as will elevate them into that upper stratum of 



THE ENGLISH PEASANT. * 115 

society,, which is occupied by greengrocers, beer- 
shop keepers, and other small tradesmen who have 
capital enough to invest in business. But these are 
the exceptions, just as the manumitted slaves in 
the days of negro slavery in America were the ex- 
ceptions to the otherwise universal bondage of the 
race. Once a peasant always a peasant seems to 
be the fate of the large majority of this useful and 
laborious class, leaving, perhaps, a margin of five 
or six per cent, who drift off into the army, the 
stable, or the kitchen. Why the English peasantry, 
the border men excepted, should be inferior in 
energy, or in the art of bettering themselves than 
their compeers in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, has 
never yet been satisfactorily explained; unless — 
and I do not mean to say that this particular expla- 
nation is wholly satisfactory — it be from their in- 
nate sluggishness of character. Whatever may be 
the cause, there is a lack of imagination among 
them that leads to a lack of enterprise, and that 
seems somehow or other to run in the blood of 
those portions of the British people that are not of 
Celtic origin or intermixture. The peasantry of 
Saxon England have produced among them but 
two poets, Robert Bloomfield, the author of the 
" Farmer's Boy," and John Clare, author of the 
p Village Minstrel ; " neither of them a poet with 
any claims to the first or even to the second rank, 



116 MB. PLANT, 

while Scotland's poets, sprung from the agricul- 
tural and labouring classes, are to be numbered by 
scores, including Robert Burns, a greater than fifty 
Bloomfields and Clares rolled into one, and a long 
bead roll of genuine bards and minstrels, of whom 
it is sufficient to name Allan Ramsay, the barber ; 
William Ferguson, the sailor; James Hogg, the 
shepherd; Robert Tannahill, the weaver; Hugh 
Miller, the stonemason; and Jean Glover, the 
strolling tinker. 

I once endeavoured to make a more intimate 
acquaintance with one English peasant, than squires 
and parsons and charitable ladies ever think it 
worth while to cultivate with persons of a caste, 
from which their own caste is as much removed 
as that of the Brahmin from the Pariah. The old 
man was a fair specimen of his class, neither much 
better nor much worse, neither much more intelli- 
gent nor much more apathetic than his fellows. He 
was seventy years of age when I knew him first, 
and he lived for three years afterwards in the work- 
house, the sole resource for such as he, when old 
age comes upon them. His name was Plant, and 
the parson of the rural parish in which he was born 
and bred, and in the neighbourhood of which he had 
laboured until his limbs grew stiff and his right hand 
lost its cunning, informed me that there had been 
people of that name in the parish for five hundred 



THE ENGLISH PEASANT. 117 

years ; perhaps, lie said, offshoots of the great house 
of the Plantagenets, but, at all events, a very ancient 
family (as if all families were not equally ancient, if 
we could but trace them) ! William Plant married 
when he was nineteen years of age, and in re- 
ceipt of the magnificent wages of ten shillings a 
week. His wife, who was a year older than him- 
self, was a domestic servant in the family of the 
village doctor, and had saved from her wages at the 
time that Plant became enamoured of her no less a 
sum than seven pounds, a fortune in the eyes of one 
who, as he said, had never before held two sovereigns 
in his hand. The seven pounds went a good way 
towards furnishing their little cottage of two rooms, 
and for two or three years, as the wife was a handy 
woman, and could do plain needlework, wash, iron, 
and get up fine linen, their humble household was 
happy enough, and Plant thought he had done a wise 
thing to marry. " It kept me out of the public- 
house," he said, " and out of bad company. It had 
f been my delight of a shiny night, in the season of 
the year ' just to go out for a lark, but I never did 
that after I was married. By-and-by the children 
came, and twice the wife had twins. It seemed to 
me that the twins brought us good luck, for the 
squire's lady was very kind when they came, and 
sent clothes, and baby linen, and a little port wine 
for the missus. The vicar's wife was good too, and 



113 MB. PLANT, 

made as much fuss over the babies,, for a month or 
two, as if they were real live angels. And it so 
happened that before twelve years passed over, the 
missus and I were in possession of eleven children, 
and very hard put to it to find them bread, let alone 
clothes. The missus, after her fifth child, was no 
longer able to work, and had more than enough to 
do to keep the house in order and mend the rags. 
My wages were by this time two shillings a day. 
But, Lord love ye ! that was nothing, not enough 
for two of us, let alone thirteen. How we managed 
I don't know. They say God Almighty always 
sends bread when he sends mouths and stomachs. 
I did not find it so always, and when one little child 
— a poor sickly ailing thing it was — died of fever, 
I was, I am afraid, almost wicked enough not to 
feel very sorry. It was buried by the parish, and 
the missus wept over it, just as if it had been the 
dearest treasure in the world, as no doubt it was to 
her. It is very hard to keep the little things ; but 
very hard to lose them all the same, especially for the 
women kind. We got helped on a bit by the parish 
every winter; and the two elder children — a boy 
and a girl — when they were eight years old, earned 
a shilling now and then by weeding and scaring 
the crows and sparrows. The missus, too, earned 
a little in harvest time, and betwixt us all we 
managed, though God knows how, just to live, and 



THE ENGLISH PEASANT. 119 

to keep ourselves warm, though not too warm, I 
can assure you. Didn't the children go to school ? 
Well, to the Sunday school, and in winter now and 
then to the day school : but you see we could not 
spare them for the latter part of the year ; for as 
soon as they growed up to be eight or nine they 
could earn summat, however small, if it were only 
picking up sticks in the woods and the road side to 
help light the fire. It wasn't much as they learned 
at the Sunday-school, only reading ; no writing or 
ciphering— just about as much as I learned when I 
was a boy. I can read a little. I read the Bible 
and the newspaper sometimes, but I can't write, and 
I don't understand newspapers much, except the 
murders, she robberies, and fires, and such like. 
The missus can write a bit, and tried to teach me ; 
but I was too old to larn, and never could make 
nothing on it. She taught Tom, our eldest boy, to 
write, and Jane our eldest girl; but the children 
came on so fast after a time, and she had so much 
to do with managing them and mending their 
clothes and screwing and scraping to feed them that 
she had to give up teaching. I kept my health and 
strength wonderfully well — the Lord be praised. I 
think that if I could have earned twenty-four 
shillings a week instead of twelve I should have 
been happy enough in good seasons. Did I never 
think of going to America ? Well, I dare say I 



120 MB. PLANT, 

may have done. They say there's plenty of land 
there, and few men — -just the revarse of what there 
is here ; but how was I to get to America I should 
like to know ? I could not save a penny in a year, 
and it would' have cost a matter of forty pounds, I 
have heerd, to pay our passage out. Forty pounds ! 
You might as well come upon me to pay the national 
debt. No ; it was of no use for me to think of 
America, and besides, even if I had the money, I 
was too old to go to America when I first heerd on 
it. It's too late in the day at fifty- six years of age 
to go to a new country, and to a new people. I 
think my eldest boy, Tom, would have gone with 
his wife and children if he had had money enough ; 
but it was the same with him as with me. He got 
married like a fool, as his father was before him, 
when he was barely twenty ; but not being of such 
a good constitution as me, he couldn't stand the 
work and the trouble as I did; and though he's 
only fifty now, he's an older man nor I am at seventy. 
He's got eight children, and one of them's a born 
idiot and another a cripple. It's hard times for 
him, I think 3 and if anything should happen to 
him the whole family would have to go to the work- 
house. Any more of my children married ? Yes. 
My eldest daughter. She was a tidy girl, and a 
pretty girl too, and got into service at the vicar's. 
She had good wages, and a good place — plenty to 



THE ENGLISH PEASANT. 121 

eat and drink, and all her money her own to buy 
clothes and ribbons with, and sometimes at Christ- 
mas a pound to spare to help her poor old father 
and mother through the winter. But she did not 
know when she was well off. She would go and 
get married, after she had only been three years in 
service, to a fellow as I never could bear — a jobbing 
carpenter, who is a good deal too fond of his beer 
and of bad company to make a good husband. She's 
never known what it was to be comfortable since 
her marriage, and wishes she was back again in 
service, with a shilling to spare for a ribbon now 
and then. But she has no shilling and no ribbon, 
nor is likely to have. How many grandchildren 
have I ? Well, I think there have been more than 
forty of them, but a good many of them are dead — 
died young, and I do sometimes think that if all the 
children that are born into the world lived and 
growed up to be men and women that there wouldn't 
be half room enough in the world for 'em, leastways 
not in England and in our parish. You say it's 
wrong for the poor to marry in this thoughtless 
manner. Well, perhaps it is. I don't say it isn't ; 
but it's about the only comfort the poor have got, 
though the comfort brings sorrow along with it ; as 
most things do in this world as far as I know on. 
It would be rather hard lines if the sparrows and 
the butterflies might mate, and men and women 



122 MB. PLANT, 

might not unless they had a hundred and fifty pounds 
a year, or were squires, and dukes, and such like. 
The missus ? Ay, she's been dead more 'an ten 
years now — rest her soul ; an' if she had been alive 
I should not ha' gone into the workhouse to be 
separated from her, but have got an out-door 
allowance, and managed somehow to crawl down to 
the grave alongside of her. She was a good woman 
she was, and sorely tried, and wears I hope a crown 
of glory on her head in heaven at this moment. 
f Blessed are the poor in spirit/ says our Lord and 
Saviour, ' for their's is the Kingdom of Heaven, and 
she is in the Kingdom of Heaven, where I hope to 
be." He was going to be pathetic, so I suppose I 
must have put a sudden question to him, for he said 
rather sharply for so raild, so very mild and meek, 
and utterly down-trodden and worn-out a person, 
i( Have I no dislike in eating the bread of the 
parish ? Well, I can't say I have. I would rather 
eat it at our cottage, and have an allowance to live 
with one of my sons. And the skilligalee is 
wretched poor stuff, and I don't like the house rules, 
and would like to get out oftener than I do ; but 
still right is right, and the parish owes me my 
bread. I've toiled in it all my life ; and after all, 
though I'm a pauper, I'm a man, and not a dog to 
be turned out to die in a ditch, and then you see, 
God is just. I've had a bad time of it in this world, 
and I hope to have a good time of it in the next." 



THE ENGLISH PEASANT. 123 

The reader will see that there was a good deal of 
stolid endurance in Mr. Plant, but very little pluck, 
energy, or spirit. There was fair material in him 
that had never been worked up to any good end ; 
material that, under more favourable circumstances, 
say in the prairies of America, where labour is 
scarce, the soil fruitful, and farms to be easily 
obtained by the poorest of squatters, might have 
been so manipulated as to have converted this 
patient and hopeless serf into a lively, active, and 
prosperous citizen. Though England may be over- 
peopled by thoughtless and improvident labourers 
of the lowest class, like poor Plant, the world is not 
over-peopled by any means ; and how to bring the 
Plants to the soil that cannot come to the Plants 
is the problem. Before any satisfactory solution is 
likely to be obtained, the Plants are likely to go on 
breeding, toiling, and suffering for centuries to 
come, as they have done for centuries past. The 
more's the pity ! 





A PLEA FOE BARE FEET. 




HE clergyman of my parish made a 
piteous appeal to me a short time ago, 
in behalf of the poor, and especially of 
the little children — who had, as the re- 
verend gentleman pathetically remarked, ec scarcely 
a shoe or stocking to their poor little feet." A 
day or two afterwards, a respectable married 
woman, the wife of a mechanic, earning about 
twenty shillings a week, and having a family of 
nine children, seven of whom were dependent 
upon her and her husband's exertions, complained 
bitterly of what she called the " awful expense" of 
boots and shoes for her little ones. She often 
bought them boots, after a hard struggle, when she 
would much rather have spent the money in bread 
and butter, which they sorely needed. She starved 
their bellies, as she said, for the sake of their feet. 
Now, as I went barefooted myself when a u wee 
Gallant," as most Scottish lads and lasses do in 
the rural districts, whether their parents be rich or 



A FLEA FOB BABE FEET. 125 

poor, I bethought myself that much might be said 
on behalf of bare feet for young children, whether 
as regarded health, cleanliness, beauty, or economy. 
A late gallant Scottish Admiral once said, that 
until he was twelve years of age, he never wore shoe 
or boot unless he went into a town ; and that he was 
always glad to get back into the country again and 
take off the encumbrance from his feet and legs. He 
also said that until he was fourteen, he seldom had 
anything but oatmeal porridge and new milk for his 
breakfast, dinner and supper, an excellent food, he 
added, for the making both of bone and muscle. 
The admiral was proud of his agility, and when 
close upon the threescore years and ten, that are 
the allotted period of human life, could dance the 
Highland Fling and the Gillie Callum, with a grace 
and alertness, which men young enough to be his 
grandsons might have envied. He attributed much 
of his vigour to his early training, and to the fact 
that his feet had been left in his childhood and 
youth in the wholesome regimen of Scottish out- 
door life, to develope themselves as nature intended. 
The Admiral's experience was not peculiar, as many 
a sturdy Scot in every part of the world can testify. 
Every one who has travelled, either in the Highlands 
or the Lowlands, must have noticed the legs bare 
and shapely, and the neat ankles and feet of the 
lads, and especially of the lasses in the gleus, and 



126 A PLEA FOE 

on the moors, and in the streets of the towns and 
villages; and, if he be a reader of Robert Burns, 
must have thought upon the lines where he de- 
scribes the genius of Caledonia, in the guise of a 
rural maiden, without shoe or stocking, as a spirit 
should be. 

Down flowed her robe o' tartan sheen, 
Till half a leg was scrimply seen, 
And such a leg ! My bonnie Jean 
Alone conld peer it ! 

Most children in rural Scotland are innocent of 
all patronage of the craft of St. Crispin, and love, 
as the immortal song says, to "paidle" in the burns 
that all over the mountain land are as plentiful as 
trees in England : 

We twa hae paidled in the burn 

Frae morning sun till dine, 
But seas between us braid hae roamed 

Since Auld Lang Syne. 

" Paidled ? " exclaims the English reader — 
"what is paidling?" Nothing, my friend, but 
paddling about in the water with bare feet — a very 
favourite diversion with the children of the glens 
and the mountains, and the recollection of which, 
when brought to mind in a company of Scotsmen 
by the singing of their national song, of Auld Lang 
Syne invariably arouses their enthusiasm, and fills 
them with patriotic emotion. 



BABE FEET. 127 

It can scarcely be denied that a bare foot 
and leg is a more picturesque object than a foot 
with an old, patched, down-trodden boot or shoe, 
and a dirty darned stocking. But for young 
people the bare foot has other than artistic and 
sesthetic recommendations, and much may be said 
in favour of its economy, and what is far more im- 
portant, of its healthiness. Nothing in the back 
slums of English cities is more suggestive of squalid - 
ness and misery than the unsuccessful attempts of 
the poor to be decently shod. A ragged coat or gown 
is less suggestive of extreme want than the forlorn 
boots and shoes of the children, and the filthiness of 
their stockings. And yet the poor of England 
must spend a considerable portion of their scanty 
earnings in the attempt to procure what custom, 
habit, use, and the general consent of society, agree 
to think indispensable pieces of attire. If it be 
estimated that the number of poor children under 
twelve years of age living in the rural districts and 
cities of England is three millions — a very moderate 
calculation — and that each child costs five shillings 
a year for such poor boots, shoes, and stockings as 
its parents can purchase, we have a sum of no less 
than seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds per 
annum expended for a purpose which the children 
of the poor Scotch, as well as the Irish, neither 
think essential nor agreeable ; and if the annual sum 



128 A FLEA FOB 

be multiplied by twelve, we have no less than nine 
millions of pounds sterling lost to the parents, with- 
out any real advantage to the children. Amongst 
the poorest of the poor, would it not be an advan- 
tage if the share contributed by them to this large 
total of wealth were expended, as my good friend the 
mechanic's wife said, in bread and butter, and the 
other food required, or if a little share of it went to 
pay the school fees ? There is no reason in nature 
why the foot and leg should be covered — with the 
exception perhaps of the sole. A handsome foot is, 
as everybody knows, as pleasant an object as a 
well-shaped hand. And if the hand could only be 
cramped by the glove a quarter as much as the foot 
is cramped by the shoemaker, there would scarcely 
be a pretty hand left in all England, unless it 
belonged to some strong-minded person of either 
sex who was bold enough to set fashion at defiance. 
As regards health, grace, and agility, we have 
but to ask ourselves whence come corns and 
bunions, and how continually the sufferers from 
these painful callosities, are prevented by the tor- 
ture they inflict, from taking the walking exercise 
which is alike the cheapest, the most healthful, 
and the most agreeable, to be convinced that of 
all the handicrafts that minister to the wants 
and the comforts of man, that of the shoemaker 
could be most advantageously dispensed with. In 



BABE FEET. 129 

England, among rich and poor alike, the normally- 
shaped foot of an adult is very seldom to be seen, 
as every doctor or surgeon can testify as the result 
of his experience. In fact, the feet of most men 
and women are deformed, and the great toe forced 
from its natural position in a curve towards the 
little toe, which, in like manner, is curved inward. 
Were it not for the respite and the liberty accorded 
at night — which mitigate but do not remove the 
evil — the feet of Englishmen, and more especially 
of English women, who cramp them in order that 
they may appear small and elegant, would be as 
little serviceable for wholesome exercise as those of 
the Chinese ladies, whom we all agree to laugh at, 
seeing the mote in our neighbour's eyes, but not in 
our own. It has been cynically suggested that the 
boot and shoemakers are in league with the chiro- 
podists and doctors to damage our health by means 
of our feet ; and that they are allowed a per-centage 
by the profession for the callosities which they 
create. But cynics are privileged to believe the 
worst of everything and everybody; and doubtless 
the Crispins, great and small, would be quite as 
willing to make boots and shoes on natural prin- 
ciples, so as to allow for the healthful play and 
motion of the foot as to make unnatural ones, if 
Fashion and Custom would but run in that direc- 
tion. But Custom is like a mountain, not to be 

K 



130 PLEA FOB BABE FEET. 

moved by the blast of a trumpet ; and Fashion is 
more obstinate in having its own way, in spite of 
reason and remonstrance, than all the mules, pigs, 
and asses that ever existed since the creation of 
the world. 

I end in the same spirit with which I began. 
Better a clean hand than a dirty glove ; better bare 
feet than clouted shoon and ragged stockings \ and 
better, far better feet such as Nature intended, than 
the feet which we owe to Fashion and the boot- 
makers. 





A WIT AND A POET. 

HOTLY contested election in a county 
town was just concluded, and the can- 
didate of whose committee I had been a 
member, had been returned at the head 
of the poll by a very splendid majority. I was 
alone in the committee-room, wheu there walked 
in, unannounced, and very much the worse for 
liquor, a person whom I shall take the liberty of 
calling Mr. Donaldson. He was a man of about 
fifty years of age, unwashed, unkemped, and in a 
state of raggedness that was distressing to behold. 
I knew well who he was, and what he wanted ; and 
though I was in very good humour with myself and 
all the world, as one is apt to be in the hour of 
success, I determined that I would not comply with 
Mr. Donaldson's demand. It was, as I anticipated, 
a request for money — for the small sum of five 
shillings — which, to do Mr. Donaldson justice, I 
must say he had very fairly earned. Mr. Donald- 



132 A WIT AND A POET. 

son had been a journeyman weaver — had a taste 
for literature — was a man of great natural ability — 
had published a volume of poems, which were neither 
very good nor very bad ; and was a capital hand at 
epigrammatic squibs, both in prose and verse ; and 
in the composition of such, which our committee 
had published in the press and upon the walls of 
our town, had done good service to the victorious 
candidate. He had received many small sums 
during the election, and had spent them in drink. 
Had he been sober when he presented himself be- 
fore me, he should, as a matter of course, have re j 
ceived his five shillings and a little good advice, 
which, not being a matter of course, it is more than 
probable he would not have taken ; but as he was 
so painfully drunk, I resolved that I would not, at 
least that day, add fuel to the flame that was con- 
suming him, or give him even a sixpence, to pour 
an additional dose of his enemy into his mouth. I 
made him understand this, as peremptorily as I 
could, but as he was not savagely but only maudlin 
drunk, he was more pained than offended, and 
appealed to my mercy, rather than to my justice, 
for the money. But I was obdurate, and made him 
understand that if he would return in the morning, 
perfectly sober, " clothed, and in his right mind," 
he should have ten shillings instead of five, and the 
prospect of earning something more on account of 



A WIT AND A POET. 133 

the election. It was a long parley, and a very diffi- 
cult victory to win ; but I won it, partly by threats, 
partly by entreaties, and partly, I suppose, by the 
electrical influence of a strong will over a weak one. 
The fact was that I knew and had heard so much 
good of this poor man, that I greatly desired not 
only for an opportunity to do him a real service, 
but to hear from his own lips the story of his life, 
his struggles, his temptations, and his hopes for 
the future — if he had any. 

He came the next morning at eight o'clock, ac- 
cording to appointment, ragged as usual, but with 
clean hands and face, and a light in his clear blue 
eyes, that seemed to show that the fumes of liquor 
in his brain were very volatile, and passed away 
quicker than is common with most people. I asked 
him if he were ready for a walk of a dozen miles, to 
a town to which we might easily have gone by rail 
had it suited my fancy. He expressed himself in 
the affirmative, though he said he should first of all 
like to have his breakfast. This I provided for him, 
not in money but in kind, for fear of accidents. 
The day was lovely, neither too hot nor too cold, 
and when, after twenty minutes' walk, we got clear 
of the streets, the beauty of the autumnal tints upon 
the trees, the greenness of the grass, the transparent 
blueness of the sky, the warmth of the sunshine, and 
the joyous freshness of the breeze, seemed to affect 



134 A WIT AND A POET. 

my ragged companion as I know they affected me, 
with a sense of physical enjoyment, and of gratitude 
to Heaven for the blessed gift of life. I soon en- 
gaged him in a conversation which gradually as- 
sumed, on his part, an autobiographical shape. He 
was the son of a poor weaver in the West of Scot- 
land, and was put to work at his father's trade at 
the tender age of eight years. Before that time he 
had learned to read at a little school kept by an old 
woman or ' ' dame," and being naturally quick, he 
had already stored his infant mind with fairy legends, 
stories of adventure, and snatches of verse. The 
hours of labour at that time in factory work were 
from six in the morning until eight in the evening, 
with two intervals for meals, half an hour for break- 
fast and an hour for dinner. The overseer of the 
factory seeing the child engaged in reading during 
the dinner hour, and being surprised to find the 
eager desire of knowledge that had taken possession 
of him, not only allowed him an additional couple of 
hours every day to attend school, without making 
any deduction from his wages, but very generously 
paid for his schooling. By the time he was fifteen 
years of age, he had attained considerable pro- 
ficiency in English composition, a competent ac- 
quaintance with the rules of arithmetic, had studied 
Greek, Roman, and English history, together with 
geography, and knew something — but not much — 



A WIT AND A POET. 135 

of Latin. He also began to revel in the writings 
of Robert Burns,, and to awake to the consciousness 
that he, too, was a poet. Like Burns, too, his first 
rhymes welled from his heart in admiration of the 
beauty of a young girl in his own sphere of life. 
Precocious in his physical as well as in his mental 
powers, he fell desperately in love before he was 
sixteen, and, before he was seventeen, he was 
married to the girl of his first choice — like himself, 
a millworker. Between them both they earned 
about a pound a week, and on this pittance they 
commenced the hard battle of the world. The young 
man, as he grew older, discovered that he was a 
wit and a politician as well as a weaver, and at the 
time of the first Reform agitation took the Radical 
side, and let off in the local newspapers a series of 
squibs against the " borough-mongers," as they were 
called, which excited much attention, and led to 
many inquiries for the author. He, on his part, 
was by no means unwilling to declare himself, and 
to receive such homage and pay as his effusions 
commanded. The homage was considerable, the pay 
very scanty. Unthinking people, surprised to find 
such talents in a weaver, patronized him in their 
good-natured but blundering way ; brought him into 
the society of his betters — better only in point of 
worldly position — and invited him to their con- 
vivial parties. 



136 A WIT AND A POET. 

" Many a time," said he, " when I would have 
been better pleased with a shilling in hard cash, I 
have drunk, at other people's expense, ten shillings' 
worth of wine and whisky, and have been brought 
out, I feel it now, to make sport of these brainless 
but good-hearted Philistines, who enjoyed my con- 
versation, and had very little of their own. I must 
own that I liked this kind of thing. I felt a sense 
of power and supremacy. I was a Triton among 
the minnows. My appetite grew by what it fed on. 
I knew myself to be the intellectual superior of the 
people who plied me with liquor to get the wit out 
of me, yet I did not despise them, or shun their 
society. On the contrary, I felt ill at ease with 
myself and with the world, if, by any accident, I were 
not invited to their social gatherings. Off and on, I 
had been leading this kind of life for some years — 
being still a mill-hand, and gaining an occasional 
guinea for a poem — save the mark ! when one of my 
comrades, the managing clerk in a lawyer's office, 
gave me an introduction to the editor of a liberal 
paper in the city. He appeared to be as pleased with 
me, as I certainly was with him, and offered me a 
situation on his paper, partly as a collector of local 
news, and partly as a corrector of proofs, in which art 
and mystery I soon became expert. This was a great 
rise in the world for me, for I had a salary of two 
guineas a week, more than double the joint earnings 



A WIT AND A POET. 137 

of myself and wife, and I was thus enabled to take 
her out of the mill, and give her freedom to attend 
to the children. I was twenty-one years old at 
this time, and had three children, and the prospect 
of a fourth. But my old love of good-fellowship, 
and my power of repartee, and the knack of saying 
things that were either good in themselves, or that 
seemed good to those who heard them, especially 
when spiced with a little cynicism — which I never 
really felt in my heart — proved my bane, to a far 
greater extent than in my humbler sphere as a 
weaver. For a time all went on smoothly enough ; 
and I might have done well, had I been ordinarily 
prudent, and had not the devil of conceit taken pos- 
session of me, to a degree that made me imagine I 
was one of the greatest geniuses in the world, and 
that some of the good fellows, whose evenings I 
made so pleasant, would sometime or other find the 
means of advancing my fortunes. I am old enough 
— and sad enough now — to know that a man is his 
own best friend, if not his only one, and that he who 
expects others to help him forward in the great life- 
battle, while he himself does nothing, is as big a 
fool as was ever suffered to crawl upon the earth. 
But I was full of hope at that time, and had not 
discovered mankind to be that ' unco' squad ' which 
Kobert Burns described. I was out so much and 
so late at nights, during my newspaper engage- 



138 A WIT AND A POET, 

ments ; sometimes on business,, oftener for pleasure 
— such pleasure as illimitable whisky could supply 
— that my wife began to grieve and pine, and make 
things very disagreeable to me at home. This 
ought to have cured me of my unfortunate habits ; 
but it did not — the more's the pity! It only 
afforded me in my perversity of mind an additional 
excuse for persistence in wrong-doing. It is an old 
story, and a sad one ; and I need not repeat too 
much of it. Late hours and debaucheries, affected 
by degrees my capacity for work. I gave dissatis- 
faction at the office, and ultimately ; — I must say 
after many efforts on the part of my employer to 
bring me back into the ways of sobriety and regu- 
larity; — I lost my situation. The blow for a while 
was stunning. But I plucked up heart. I had no 
idea of going back to the mill, even if I could have 
been taken on again. I felt that I was a journalist, 
and something better than a weaver ; and a jour- 
nalist I resolved to remain. But I saw no chance of 
advancement in this career at home, and as for 
London, which I once thought of attempting, I gave 
up the idea of it, and resolved to try my fortune in 
the United States. A little subscription was got up 
for me, sufficient to pay my passage to New York 
in a sailing packet — there were no steamboats on 
the Atlantic at that time — and to leave my wife as 
much money as would maintain her for three months. 






A WIT AND A POET. 139 

I was full of hope and courage, and resolved to send 
for her as soon as I could turn round in the New- 
World. I had great ideas of the future. Andrew 
Jackson, whose Irish mother had once kept an 
apple-stall at a street corner in Limerick or Dublin 
— I forget which — was President of the United 
States, and if he, born so low, could rise so high, 
could not I mount in that land of liberty above my 
present mean estate, and be a little more of a some- 
body than I could ever hope to be at home ? We 
had bad weather going out, and the voyage lasted 
seventy- one days, during all which time I had 
neither the means nor the opportunity for indul- 
gence in liquor. I had not been a week in New 
York before I found that I had made a great mis- 
take as regards the chances of employment in that 
city ; and I trudged away on foot to Philadelphia. 
Here also I found that I was out of my element. I 
discovered that America was not exactly the place 
for any one who was not a farmer, a farm-labourer, 
or a lusty mechanic, who was able to clear a farm on 
the outskirts of civilization, and fight with the bears 
and Eed Indians. I was disappointed and sick at 
heart. No doubt I was a poor fool, and a coward 
as well. A countryman from the West of Scotland 
whom I met in Philadelphia, helped me on a bit, 
and tried to get me a newspaper engagement. But 
I knew nothing of American politics, and did not 



140 A WIT AND A POET. 

care to learn ; and became, I scarcely know how, 
or by what gradations, a mere " loafer," living from 
hand to mouth, from hour to hour, as it were, on 
chances that were scarcely better for me than for 
the birds, or the stray dogs that prowled about the 
streets. I was long in this condition, brightened up 
now and then by my temporary friend and per- 
manent foe, the whisky bottle, which was provided 
for me in the company of a few of my countrymen, 
who liked my society, and were glad to drink with 
any one who had recently arrived from the { dear 
auld country,' as they called it, and who loved to 
sing ' Auld Lang Syne/ and ' Willie brewed a Peck 
o' Maut,' and other songs that recalled Scotland to 
their memory. I had written home the news of my 
bad fortune, and after a while, at the instigation of 
my wife, a letter was sent to me from my old friend 
the lawyer's clerk, to say that another newspaper 
engagement, about as good as the last, but on 
another journal, awaited me, if I thought it advis- 
able to return, and would notify the fact immedi- 
ately. I was but too willing. The home-sickness 
was strong upon me. My Philadelphian friends 
subscribed money enough to pay my passage across 
the Atlantic, and gave me a little purse in hand, 
and a parting supper, which I remember to this 
day, as one of the happiest incidents in my weary 
life. ( The mirth and fun grew fast and furious/ 



A WIT AND A POET. 141 

as we toasted Scotland and her worthies, and above 
all, ' the immortal memory of Robert Burns/ whose 
equal in genius on this occasion I fully believed 
myself to be — a belief, I think, that was shared by 
several of the company. The passage home was 
pleasanter than the voyage out, and occupied but 
nineteen days. I often thought, as I paced the 
deck, and I sometimes think the same now, that I 
ought, with my generous ideas — my love of com- 
pany and conversation, and my conviviality of nature 
to have been born to a good estate, and enabled to 
dispense hospitality to high and low. I should have 
made a good country squire, and devoted my morn- 
ings to my books, my garden, or my farm, and my 
evenings to the company of good fellows. But 
I, with my tastes and predilections was a mere 
waif and stray, a floating straw upon the river of 
life, and by no means the big ship that I thought 
myself. 

" On my return home, after a happy meeting with 
my family, I received the appointment that had 
been promised me, and resolved to work hard, and 
walk warily for the remainder of my days ; to put 
the drag upon the wheel, or stop the coach of con- 
viviality altogether. I kept my resolution indiffer- 
ently well for six or seven years, and in addition 
to the current routine of my newspaper duties, 
threw off songs, ballads, and epigrams almost as 



142 A WIT AND A POET. 

freely as the clouds throw out the rain drops, and 

got as little for my drops as the clouds for theirs. 

I published a volume of poems, which did not so 

greatly take the taste of the public as to pay the 

expense of printing, and I at one time thought I 

should have had to go to jail for the debt I had 

contracted by this unlucky venture. I got over 

it, somehow ; though the thing was like a mill- stone 

round my neck for a longer time than I can now 

remember. I think it was the unsuccess of this 

unlucky book — I made a bonfire one night of three 

or four hundred unsold copies of it, determined 

that they should not go to the trunk-makers — that 

drove me for comfort to the whisky again. I took 

it as a medicine for the hope deferred that maketh 

the heart sick, and found it successful. 

Wi' tippenny we fear nae evil, 
Wi' usquebae we'll face the devil. 

Such was my experience — and as long and as often 
as I was in the mood for it, I never had far to look 
to find companions to treat me, as in an earlier time 
— to laugh at my sallies of wit, if wit it was, and to 
applaud the lightest utterances of the rollicking 
humour that possessed me, after the third or fourth 
tumbler. For ten years I have been in this plight. 
I have knocked at Death's door, and have not been 
admitted. I have slept in barns and outhouses. I 
have been in the hospital, and I have been in the 



A WIT AND A POET. 143 

lunatic asylum ; and I am, as you now see me, a 
poor wreck of a man, one whom it is impossible 
to save, even if he were worth the salvage. My 
wife left me long ago ; but is still alive. I dare not 
go to see her. My children are all grown up, and 
able to take care of themselves — which is more 
than I can do. And yet I think I was made for 
better things. I feel some spark of divinity within 
me, which whisky has not quenched. I feel that I 
might have been a good man, if I had had a strong 
will to govern me in my early days, and train me 
properly. But I never had any guidance except 
the gratification of my own will, and cannot say 
with Eobert Burns that 'the light that led astray 
was light from Heaven/ No, it was light from Hell. 
You ask me if I have any hopes or plans for the 
future ? Frankly, I have none. My mind — or 
what is left of it — is as purposeless as the wander- 
ing wind. It cannot fix itself to anything; and it 
is a wonder to me, if what I have said in our walk, 
has been consistent and coherent. I think, how- 
ever, if I like anything, that I should like to get 
out of the city and all its ways, and live wholly in 
the country. It is my present idea — I don't know 
how long it will last — that I could take the part of 
assistant gardener, if there were not much digging 
to do, for my back is weaker than my mind, and 
stooping pains me. But light work, pruning, train- 



144 A WIT AND A POET. 

ing, weeding, and pottering about, as I might say, 
just to give me a pursuit, or the semblance of a pur- 
suit, takes my fancy for the moment ; and possibly, 
God knows ! might make me respectable for the 
remainder of my days." 

" And your wife ?" I interposed. " Well, poor 
woman, she thinks me incorrigible and irreclaim- 
able. Perhaps I am, but I hope not; and could I 
exorcise the Whisky Demon out of me, it is very 
likely she would come back to me. Women are 
better than men, all the world over, suffer more, 
love more, and are worth more." 

Mr. Donaldson would not sit down with me to 
dinner in the inn at which we halted. -■ I am too 
proud to sit down with you," he said ; u too proud 
to afford the waiters an opportunity to stare at you 
and think you eccentric, or out of your mind for 
consorting with such a ragged, rascally-looking 
vagabond as I am. Give me the means to get a 
dinner by myself, and I pledge you my honour I 
will spend it on dinner, and return to you as fresh 
and liquorless as I am now." I trusted him, and 
he kept his word ; and we walked back to the great 
city, when he received his stipulated guerdon for 
his loss of time ; and made a solemn promise to call 
upon me that day week, sober. He kept his word in 
this instance also. Meanwhile, I had spoken about 
him to our friend the member for the borough — 



A WIT AND A POET. 145 

interested him in Donaldsons talents and character, 
and procured for him the post he coveted of assis- 
tant-gardener in the honourable gentleman's domain. 
He had light work — a little pleasant cottage to 
live in — and humble but sufficient wages. His wife 
rejoined him \ and for six months, perhaps the hap- 
piest of his life, he lived amid the trees and flowers, 
and did not get drunk above once a fortnight. But 
the end was at hand. His constitution was shat- 
tered. The flame of life burned low in the socket, 
and he went off. suddenly without a sigh or a groan. 
Peace to his memory ! He was an acorn that had 
the capacity for becoming an oak-tree if circum- 
stances had favoured ; but he fell into evil places, 
and rotted into barrenness; or, if the simile be 
more appropriate, was found by a swine — the swine 
of Intemperance that consumed and ate him up. 





ICE. 




HE thermometer stood at ninety in the 
shade in my garden. There had fallen 
no rain in the sonth of England for up- 
wards of six weeks, except an occasional 
shower, of no more real refreshment to the parched 
ground than a teaspoonful of water would have been 
to a thirsty giant. I sat on the lawn under the shade 
of an apple-tree, and read the doleful account in the 
morning's newspaper of the damage already done by 
the drought, and the still further damage to be ap- 
prehended if the fierce sun continued to stream down 
upon the world much longer, without veiling his 
face with a few clouds and storms. Brown was the 
grass and sickly were the flowers ; and the leaves 
on the tall tree-tops, though green and fresh, made 
no merry rustling to the gentle wind, for the 
simple reason that not a breath of air was stirring. 
I looked wistfully to the deep blue sky, in which 
there was not a speck of cloud that had a drop of 



I CK 147 

moisture in it, and bethought me how scant was in 
ordinary seasons the gratitude of the English for 
one of the greatest blessings of this or any other 
country. Having too much of a good thing, in the 
matter of rain, it is only when they suffer from the 
want of it that the dwellers in these isles, whether 
agriculturists or not, know what a blessing the 
rain is, just as, for a similar reason, most people 
undervalue their health, until the angelic visitant 
takes leave of them, perhaps to return no more. 
After a forty or fifty days' drought, it would be 
difficult even for Mr. Babbage, or Mr. George 
Bidder, to count up to within a hundred thou- 
sand pounds or so, the value to the farmers and 
gardeners of Great Britain and Ireland of one 
good drenching downfall of big round drops con- 
tinued for four-and- twenty hours. From the bles- 
sings of the rain, as I was both warm and thirsty, 
my thoughts wandered to the blessings of the frost 
and the snow, and to that fairest production of the 
cold — the clear, transparent, delicious ice, such as 
Lake Wenham and numberless Norwegian lakes, 
whose names no one has thought it worth while to 
promulgate, have for long years been in the habit 
of supplying to a world not sufficiently grateful for 
the luxury. As it happened, there was a remnant 
of pure Wenham in the house, brilliant as the 
Koh-i-noor. Placing a lump of the dainty bless- 



143 ICE. 

ing in a goblet, and pouring thereon the contents 
of a bottle of Brighton seltzer, I drank and was 
refreshed, and felt a physical as well as a moral 
conviction that ice was one of the greatest bounties 
of nature, and that those who do not consume it 
daily as an addendum to their diet, are ignorant of 
a cheap luxury, or thoughtlessly forego a healthful 
gratification to the palate. In the moist climate of 
the British Isles, where the commonest transitions of 
the weather are from wet to dry, and from dry to wet, 
we scarcely know what wholesome cold is, especially 
the clear, crisp cold that invigorates the whole 
system of the healthy human creature, and sets the 
blood coursing merrily through the veins. Some- 
times, it is true, as Shakespeare sings, " The icicles 
hang by the wall, and Dick the shepherd bites his 
nail," to prevent his finger-tips from being frost- 
bitten, but such hardy and vigorous seasons are 
rare and short as angel visits. Not perhaps more 
than once in seven years has the skater a fair 
chance for the enjoyment of his beautiful recreation. 
But when the ice will bear the weight of a crowd, it 
is one of the pleasantest sights in the world to 
witness the delight of the young and the middle- 
aged English of both sexes, as they wend their way 
to the nearest water, skates in hand, ready for a 
pleasure as captivating to most people as the dance 
in a ball-room, and a thousand times more healthful. 



ICE. 149 

If there be a happier being in the world at snch a time 
than a nimble skater, male or female, it is the small 
boy npon a slide, rollicking, uproarious, blissful ! 
Quick motion with little effort is always delightful, 
and in this respect both skating and sliding afford 
the nearest approach to bliss and to flying, which 
such wingless bipeds as men and women can ever 
hope to enjoy in their present state of existence. 
"I hate England," said a little Canadian boy of 
twelve years old, on board a steamer bound from 
New York to Liverpool, on his way to school at 
Harrow. "Why?" said the astonished captain. 
" Because there's no skating, and the rivers never 
freeze there, and it's always raining," he replied, 
sulkily, yet defiantly ; ' ' and it's so jolly in Canada 
in the winter." Jack Frost, if not a jack of all 
trades, is a jack of many. As an agriculturist, he is 
as serviceable in producing a full crop as the sun- 
shine or the rain, as every farmer will acknowledge. 
He destroys the noxious insects, that but for his 
exterminating touch would consume the early sown 
seed before it had time to germinate. Moreover, 
he infuses into the arable earth a chemical virtue 
that the warm moist atmosphere does not always 
contribute, and of which the beneficial results are 
apparent in the summer grass and the autumnal 
corn. As a scavenger he does more work in a 
night, by drying up the miry ways, than a million 



150 ICE. 

of men with brooms and shovels could do in a 
week. As an engineer, he can build a bridge over 
the Thames or the St. Lawrence, not exactly so 
durable as Mr. Page's at Westminster, or Mr. 
Stephenson's at Montreal, but quite as solid as either 
while it lasts; and has been known to do such 
Titanic work in a single night, which is a feat 
that the engineering genius of mere Stephensons, 
Brunels, and Pages can never hope to accomplish. 
But it is as a working jeweller that Jack Frost is 
most conspicuous. By a breath he can transform 
the dew upon the grass into diamonds, make a rose- 
leaf as beautiful as a brooch of malachite studded 
with brilliants, and convert the flimsy rope of the 
spider's web into a string of beaded pearls, such as 
empresses might envy, if any human jeweller could 
execute in more permanent form an adornment so 
lovely. Nor are these the only specimens of his 
handiwork. He can trace upon our windows the 
most delicate filagree work to which imagination 
can give almost any form it pleases, from that of 
the tree, the flower, or the leaf, to that of the whole 
forest, the flowing river, or a miniature Alp-Land, 
with the simulacra of Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, and 
the Wetterhorn in microscopic accuracy. Nature, 
so full of beautiful forms, offers nothing more 
beautiful in its kind than the icicle, produced by 
the mingled action of the sunshine and the frost ; 



ICE. 151 

of the sunshine that melts and the frost that 
hardens; of the frost that gains the temporary 
victory in the struggle, and converts the thawing 
snow into pendants of transparent crystal, glowing 
in the discomfited sunshine with all the colours of 
the rainbow. 

He who has never seen an iceberg — and expects 
to see one — has, if his expectation be realized, a 
glory yet to come, and a terror yet to behold. 

One of these floating mountains ran aground, as 
a ship might do, some years ago, and stuck fast in 
the harbour of St. John's, Newfoundland. Here it 
remained for two years, before the heats of the 
short summers were powerful enough to dissolve it. 
This berg stood upwards of eight hundred feet in 
height ; and as floating ice sinks two-thirds of its 
depth, this respectable refrigerator must have been 
about two thousand four hundred feet in total height, 
or about six times as high as St. Paul's. Some sup- 
pose that the unfortunate Atlantic steamer, the Pre- 
sident — the mysterious disappearance of which, more 
than a quarter of a century ago, created so much 
painful anxiety in England and America — must 
have run against such a floating island as this, and 
been sent to the bottom with all on board. The 
iceberg and the floe — the latter being flat or sur- 
face, as distinguished from the peak and mountain 
ice — when detached from the solid earth of the 



152 ICE. 

Polar regions, sometimes carry along with them on 
their sudden disruption large masses of granite; 
and sometimes Polar bears, which, unsuspicious of 
danger from the influence of the warm sun that 
penetrates even these inhospitable regions, have 
gone to sleep upon the ice, and awakened to find 
themselves unwilling mariners, drifting away to 
certain death in the warm waters of the southern 
seas. 

Whatever is beautiful is useful in its degree, and 
the uses of ice are as manifold as its loveliness. 
Medical science — always beneficently active to dis- 
cover the means of alleviation as well as of cure for 
the numberless physical evils that assail humanity — 
very early became aware of the value of ice as an 
anodyne, or soother of pain, in cases of local inflam- 
mation. More recently it has been discovered that 
ice can be used as an anaesthetic as advantage- 
ously as chloroform, and in some respects more ad- 
vantageously, inasmuch as it can be employed to- 
pically, in surgical operations of a severe character. 
There is no danger in its application to people of 
abnormally nervous temperament, or who suffer from 
heart disease. In the extraction of teeth — a very 
painful surgical operation, as most people know 
who remember that man (and woman also) 

Is born to trouble, 

Both from single teeth and double — 



ICE. 153 

ice is an angesthetic that completely deadens the 
sensibility of pain, and renders tooth-drawing almost 
as easy as the paring of the nails. As an article of 
luxury for the table, ice is only just beginning to be 
known to the English people — to the "upper ten 
thousand/' as it were. It remains for the present 
"caviare to the million/' except perhaps in the 
form of ices, as retailed by the pastrycooks and 
confectioners. To the fishmongers, as a conservator 
of their wares in freshness to the latest possible 
moment, ice has long been known in the shape of 
the thin slabs of dirty frozen water, in rare wintry 
seasons collected from the stagnant pools in the 
neighbourhood of our great towns and cities. Such 
ice is good for nothing but refrigeration ; but the 
real Wenham, or Norway, or St. Lawrence ice, is 
not only good for refrigeration but for consumption, 
and for every purpose of utility and health to which 
ice can be applied. In the cities of the New World ice 
is almost as essential an article of diet as bread, and 
the iceman comes round every morning as regularly 
as the milkman does in London, and leaves at the 
doorsteps of every house which he supplies a glitter- 
ing block, sufficient for the day's consumption, which 
the servant or "help" takes in at her convenience, 
serving up a portion with the breakfast butter, not 
because it is ordered, but simply as a matter of course. 
Iced water, iced milk, iced ale or beer, are as com- 



154 ICE. 

mon among all classes as iced champagne is among 
the select few in England. To forego the customary 
cooler would in the summer — and often in the 
winter, for ice is good in all seasons — be as great a 
hardship as to go without dinner. 

The British are a flesh-consuming people ; but our 
labourers and unskilled workmen taste little meat 
except bacon. Every year butchers' meat is be- 
coming more costly, and further out of the reach of I 
the poor. Trade ought to bring from South America . 
the superabundant beef, and from the Antipodes 
the superabundant mutton, that in both of these 
wealthy and teeming regions find no purchasers. 
Ice supplies the means for effecting this much- 
desired result, and there is reason for the hope as 
well as for the belief that, ere many years have 
passed, enterprising merchants will be encouraged 
to convey to our shores fleet loads of this beef and 
mutton, packed in ice, or chemically frozen, that 
our population would so gladly purchase, if it could 
be got, as it might be, at a third or even at half the 
price of the British article. If, as has been said, 
the man who makes a blade of grass to grow where 
grass never grew before, is a public benefactor, who 
shall measure the benefaction of him who shall first 
successfully organize a plan for bringing the beef 
and mutton of the antipodes to the mouths of the 
English multitude ? 



ICE. 155 

There is one other aspect of ice which we, in 
these islands, may be excused if we look upon with 
pride : the love of adventure which the mysteries of 
the Northern Pole have maintained in the minds of 
our hardy and daring mariners. lt The storm, the 
fog, the sleet, the pitiless cold," have no terrors for 
them, as dozens of expeditions to discover the 
North-west Passage, and as the names of Ross, 
Parry, Franklin, and M'Clintock, abundantly testify. 





MR. GOMM'S EXPERIENCE OF THE POOR. 




OU must have had a large — and not, I 
should think, a very favourable — ex- 
perience of poor human nature/' I said 
one day to a very worthy neighbour 
and acquaintance of mine, with whom I sometimes 
like to interchange opinions. The name of my 
acquaintance is Gomm. He has a way of spelling 
his name when he is angered — which, like the rest 
of us, he sometimes is — and declaring very empha- 
tically, " my name is Gomm, G-0 double M : " as if 
he wants to convince his antagonists or opponents, 
whomsoever they may be, that there can be no 
possible doubt as to his identity. This double con- 
sonant, somehow, seems to be emblematic of his 
decision and sharpness of character, for he is a man 
who rules his fellows, in a small way, and who seems 
born to rule them. He is the master of a large 
workhouse, and has filled the situation with credit 
for a quarter of a century. He is much respected 



EXPERIENCE OF THE POOR. 157 

alike by the magistracy, the ratepayers, and the 
poor-law inspector of his district. He is a strong, 
sturdy man, bordering upon sixty-five, with stubbly 
grey hair, a clean shaven chin, broad open brow, 
clear grey eyes, and a firmness of expression not 
alone about his mouth and chin, and all over his 
face, but in his whole build and deportment. He 
looks like a double consonant, like a man who can 
hold his own against the world, and will, in common 
parlance, "stand no nonsense" from those above 
or those below him, while he walks on the war path 
of duty. There is, nevertheless, a kindly twinkle 
in his grey eye at times ; and his firmness is by no 
means deficient in good humour. 

' ' Yes ! " replied Mr. Gomm, in answer to my 
observation, "I have seen a good deal of human 
nature in my time. I suppose by poor human 
nature, you mean the human nature of the poor ? " 

" No, indeed I do not/'' I replied. ' ' Human 
nature is the same in all of us — a poor thing — with 
much of good as well as bad about it. And I am 
not aware that the possession of money or rank 
makes any very great difference in the long run, 
unless in exceptional cases. There are bad rich 
men and good poor ones ; just as there are bad 
poor men and good rich." 

" Well," said Mr. Gomm, " I don't want to cry 
up the rich, or cry down the poor — God forbid ! 



158 MB. G OHM'S EXPERIENCE 

But I do think that short of falsehood, spite, envy, 
malice, intemperance, adultery, and occasionally 
murder, human nature would be better than it is, if 
everybody were comfortable — had good clothes, 
good houses, and enough to eat." 

" No doubt about that," replied I. " Cheating 
and robbery are born of poverty, but in talking to 
you of human nature as I did, and calling it poor 
human nature, I merely thought that you — with 
thousands of the destitute, the forlorn, the 
struggling, the lost, and the vicious, brought to 
vice by their own ungovernable passions perhaps, 
as well as by their poverty, all passing continually 
under your notice and management — must have 
had opportunities, such as have fallen to the lot of 
few, to study mankind." 

" I can't say," said Mr. Gomm, " that I have 
been much of a student, or that I have looked on 
these matters as a philosopher might have done, 
or as a man might do who was seeking materials 
to write a book or a magazine article about them ; 
as doubtless you are doing just now." 

I did not blush — the power which I once pos- 
sessed, or which, to speak more correctly, had once 
possessed me, having been driven out of me by the 
world and the world's ways, and my own ways, too, 
long, long, ago — but replied with a face that was 
not of brass, but might have been for any tinge of 



OF THE POOR. 159 

the fine sensitiveness of the blood which it betrayed. 
" Artists in human nature must study human nature 
if they would describe it. Everything does not 
come by intuition. He who would paint a tree 
must know a tree, in its life and in its death ; and 
none can paint a dog unless he have been to a cer- 
tain extent caninified — forgive the word. Even the 
great Edwin Landseer must have put his mind into a 
dog's mind before he could paint a dog half as well 
as he has done. And I like, I must own, to endea- 
vour to think sometimes with the thoughts of the 
poor and the miserable, to put myself in their places, 
to look at the world, as it were, through their eyes, 
rather than through my own, and see what colour it 
has, whether bright or sombre, or perhaps dark 
without sunlight." 

" Ah, well ! " rejoined Mr. Gomm, " I can't say 
that ever I made any attempt of the kind. It is 
not in my line. I look at the poor with my own 
eyes, not theirs ; or how d'ye think I should be able 
to keep order in the house ? The poor — notwith- 
standing all the sentiment that is talked and written 
about them — are but a poor lot, morally as well as 
physically. As a rule they are neither strong in 
body nor in mind ; at least such is my experience." 

He stopped as if he were not desirous to say any 
more. I encouraged him to proceed. 

" Why, you see," said Mr. Gomm, " in the way 



160 MB. GOMM'S EXPERIENCE 

of my business I have got to dividing the world into 
three classes : those who never come into the work- 
house, those who ought not to come into the work- 
house, and those who must come into the work- 
house." 

" The first of your three classes, I suppose, in- 
cludes all the rich and well-to-do ? " 

" Not necessarily the rich and well-to-do, for they 
come to the workhouse sometimes ; but it includes, 
of course, the great bulk of the people who pay poor- 
rates, those who are born rich, those who know the 
knack of keeping the money they have inherited, 
and those who have the art of making it as well as 
the art of taking care of it, and all the ordinarily 
prudent, careful, and well-conducted people of the 
upper and middle, and some of the lower ranks. 
But my experience does not lie among these. They 
don't pass under my care. The class that ought not 
to come into the workhouse, but does come into it, 
is a troublesome one to me, I can tell you ; and yet 
I pity these poor people very much, though I take 
precious good care not to let them know it. I have 
had, and still have, men in the house, clad in the 
pauper dress, subject to pauper discipline, and fed 
upon pauper fare, who have once possessed thou- 
sands, who have mixed in the best society, and 
who are gifted with abilities which they have not 
learned to put to proper account, or which they have 



OF THE TO OB. 161 

used only to bring themselves into mischief. I 
won't mention any real names ; but there is one 
man, let me call him Smith, who was once a fashion- 
able banker, a very fashionable banker indeed, and 
lived in great style in Tyburnia. His bank broke, 
partly by his mismanagement, partly by that of his 
father and grandfather before him. He narrowly 
escaped a criminal trial ; but got off by the skin of 
his teeth, as the Bible says, and without a penny to 
help himself in his old age. - Some of the friends 
and acquaintances of his better days subscribed a 
few pounds occasionally to keep him from want. 
He was too proud to accept a clerkship which he 
might have got, and which was offered him ; but 
was not too proud to live upon charity. All 
the same, he took the charity as a hard thing, 
and began to soften it with drink. Gin, the poor 
man's friend, and a dreadful bad friend too, the very 
worst of friends that I ever heard of, became at last 
much more plentiful in his cupboard than bread and 
cheese. He and his old wife both soaked them- 
selves in it. They took to quarrelling — a result 
not at all surprising to me — and from bad went on 
to worse every day of their miserable lives. Their 
friends soon grew tired of them, and the little sub- 
scriptions failed entirely. They are both in the 
house now, clean, sober, in their right minds, and 
tolerably useful. The old gentleman helps with the 

M 



162 MB. G02I2PS EXPERIENCE 

accounts ; and the old lady is a tidyish cook enough ; 
and they both seem to have a faint glimpse of some- 
thing like happiness when a friend, a true friend I 
call him, who was once the head cashier in the bank, 
sends the old man a pound of tobacco, and the old 
wife a pound of tea. Now ; I say he's one who 
ought not to have come into the workhouse, and 
wouldn't have come into it except for his own defi- 
ciency of moral strength. 

" There was another man I had with me for years. 
He died three months ago. Let me call him Mon- 
tague, for he had an aristocratic name, as old as 
Montague, and as high sounding. He had been a 
parliamentary reporter for some great morning 
paper or other, I don't know which ; and seemed to 
me as if he could make speeches as eloquent as any 
he had ever reported. A capital mimic he was, and 
could speak by the hour in the character of Dan 
O'Connell. He gave the brogue perfectly. The 
fun was perfect too, and real Irish. When he was 
in the humour, he could speak like Joe Hume, with 
all the hums and hahs, and half-finished sentences ; 
or he could f orate 5 like a Yankee, till he made the 
tears run down my cheeks with laughing. Good 
company, and too much of it, was the ruin of him. 
First step down the ladder into the pit of perdition 
— excessive drinking; second step, loss of character ; 
third step, loss of employment; fourth step, the 



OF THE POOR. 163 

pawnbroker ; fifth step, more drink ; sixth step, 
desperation ; seventh step, beggary and begging 
letters ; eighth step, prison ; ninth step, the work- 
house. He had been a { jolly good fellow/ as the 
saying is, but the jolly good fellows with whom he 
loved to associate, or who loved to associate with 
him, forgot his good fellowship as soon as his coat 
began to grow threadbare, and he began to hint 
that the loan of half-a-crown would be useful. No- 
body sent him any tea or tobacco.- Nobody ever so 
much as inquired after him. Only once a poor 
penny-a-liner — a real penny-a-liner, with scarcely a 
shoe to his feet, and with eyes that looked ex- 
cessively beery — came to report an inquest on the 
body of an old woman found dead in her bed, having 
heard who he was, gave him a sixpence. I am sure 
the poor young man could ill afford it. e Thank 
you, my dear fellow/ said Montague, 'I accept 
it as a loan. Keep out of this place, if you can ; 
except in the way of business. There'll be an in- 
quest on me some day, perhaps, and as you know 
something about me, you can lengthen out your 
report to the extent of sixpence ; and so repay your- 
self ! * Now, this Montague was one of the class that 
ought not to come into the workhouse, and he could 
certainly have kept out if he would. 

" There was another man with me till within a 
short time ago, who had been a great cheese mer- 



164 ME. GOMM'S EXPERIENCE 

chant. He knew all about cheese — nobody so well ; 
and made a fortune out of it. His name was — 
never mind — call him Jones; and before he was 
fifty he had scraped up fifty thousand pounds- — all 
out of cheese. Unluckily for him, he retired from 
the cheese business to live quietly on his money. 
But quietness did not suit him, and he had scarcely 
been a twelvemonth trying to live like a gentleman 
— his idea of a gentleman being a person who had 
nothing to do — than he discovered that he could 
stand that kind of life no longer, and went rioting 
roaring mad into speculations of all kinds. What 
it had taken him five-and-twenty years to build up 
with honest cheeses he knocked down in three 
years with dishonest — because rash, foolish, grasp- 
ing speculations, that had no bottom in them. He 
1 ' bust up," as the Yankees say, and escaped with 
about a thousand pounds. With that he went into 
the cheese business again. But there was another 
man in his old shop, who had " got the pull," as they 
say, and Jones could not rival the new man, not- 
withstanding all his knowledge of the article. Be- 
sides, he was down ; and I do believe, whatever the 
world may say to the contrary, that when a man is 
down everybody, or almost everybody, has a mali- 
cious pleasure in trying to keep him down. The 
world will help a young man forward, if he be 
honest, and straightforward, and likely to do well ; 



OF THE POOR. 165 

but it wont help an old man who has had his chance 
and lost it. At least, this is my experience. When 
you have come to be sixty you must have often been 
in people's way ; and if these people live, and have 
got you out of the way, they don't give themselves 
much trouble to help you into the way again. You 
are under the feet of the crowd, and the crowd rush- 
ing on its own business, will trample you to death, 
without thinking about you. After four or five 
years of new struggle in the cheese line, Mr. Jones 
gave it up as a bad job, and passed into my care. 
He passed out of it, however, before long, not into 
the next world — which might have been about the 
best thing — but into the County Lunatic Asylum. 
There he is still, and great upon cheese. He buys 
cheese by the thousand tons at a time, in his poor 
fancy, and drives a roaring trade. Perhaps the 
poor old man is happy. I trust he may be ; but if 
he had had ordinary common sense, he would 
neither have come to the workhouse nor to the 
lunatic asylum. 

" It is good, after all/' said I, ' ' that there are 
workhouses and lunatic asylums to receive these 
waifs and strays of stormy and capricious Fortune. 
But for my part, I am far more interested in the 
last of the three classes of people into which you 
divided the world — those who must come to the 
workhouse, struggle against it as they will. It 



166 MB. GOMM'S EXPERIENCE 

seems to me that these are among the very saddest 
products of our civilization, and that such people, 
call them what we will, are born slaves and pariahs, 
though they may not know it, to whom the world 
offers nothing from the outset to the end of their 
career but toil ; toil from youth to maturity, from 
maturity to old age, until the grave receives them, 
and the weary are at rest." 

' ( No," said Mr. Gomm, all his double consonants 
bristling in his face. "You are not altogether 
right. There are such people — too many of them, 
God knows — and I shall speak of them by-and-by ; 
but the mass of the poor — I know them, or ought 
to know — are not people who do, or have ever done, 
hard work. There are people who are born va- 
grants, and wanderers, and strollers, and vagabonds, 
and pests, and who hate and detest work as the 
devil does holy water. They seem to me to partake 
of the nature of birds and wild animals, or, at best, 
of the Red Indian savages in America, who can't, 
or won't, dig or plough, or cultivate anything', or 
save anything, but prefer to trust for their dinner 
to the day's chance of snaring or shooting something 
as wild, but better to eat, than themselves. How 
they do hate work, to be sure ! They'd rather cadge 
and steal for half-a- crown than gain five shillings 
honestly. In fact, England swarms with wild 
men and women of this class, men and women who 



OF THE POOR. 167 

are utterly untamable, and who use workhouses just 
as rich people use hotels, but with this difference, 
that they pay for nothing. I do detest these pro- 
fessional tramps and permanent poor, and I own 
that I sometimes wish that I might order them 
a good whipping along with the bread that they 
rob the rate-payers of. And if they are as wild 
as foxes, they are quite as cunning. Indeed, my 
opinion is that a regular inveterate professional 
tramp is as cunning and acute as an Old Bailey 
barrister, and knows as much of the world. The 
she-tramps, too — a plague on them, I say — are the 
worst specimens of human nature that ever fell 
under my notice, and some of them the most ob- 
scene and disgusting wretches that imagination can 
picture. And when they get into a rage, as they 
sometimes do, their language is awful. A man, 
the very worst that was ever hanged, is an angel 
compared with some of the she-devils that have 
come under my notice. They have a great fancy, 
some of them, to strip themselves stark naked, 
tearing up their clothes, and dancing about the 
ward like filthy witches. Sometimes as many as 
a dozen at a time will play at this game, and yell 
like tigresses, if tigresses do yell as horribly, which 
I wouldn't like to say. They do this, not only 
for the love of destruction, and with the chance of 
getting clean clothes for their dirty rags, but for a 



168 MB. GOMM'S EXPERIENCE 

wicked pleasure in exposing themselves as naked as 
the moment they were born. I must say " (and 
here the double M was very conspicuous in Mr. 
Gomm's tone of voice and in the angry sparkle of 
his eye) " that I wish it was lawful to give the im- 
pudent hussies a few rounds of the cat-o'-nine-tails ! 
If it were I would pick out the very strongest honest 
woman in the workhouse to administer the dose, and 
pay her handsomely for it." 

" But these, both male and female, must form a 
very small class ? " said I. 

" Not so small as you imagine," replied Mr. 
Gomm, his double M starting oui as vividly as 
before. " England is overrun with them, and I 
don't see any way to England's getting rid of them 
in the present generation. Perhaps the next — if, 
in the meantime, we can manage to catch every 
child over five years of age, and send it to school to 
be taught not only reading, writing, arithmetic, 
and geography, but its duty to itself and society — 
may grow up better than the present ; and the race 
of mere savages, as these men and women are, may 
diminish amongst us. That's my hope," he went 
on to say more softly, again relapsing into the 
double M, when he added, "not forgetting the cat- 
o'-nine-tails for the grown-up incorrigibles." 

" But touching the honest poor, who work until 
their strength fails them, what have you to say 
about them ? " 



OF TEE POOR. 169 

" Nothing but what is kindly and charitable. 
They are the victims of our over-crowdedness, and 
not to blame for what they cannot help. When a 
man has toiled and striven during a long life, and 
done his best, society would be worse than a wild 
beast if it allowed him to perish in his old age, when 
his right hand had lost its cunning, and his eyes 
the sparkle of strength and hope. It is a sad thing 
to me when I see a lusty, willing, young fellow 
driving the plough or industriously hedging or 
ditching or doing other farm work, to think how 
many chances there are that he will come upon the 
workhouse when his hair grows grey, and how few 
mances there are that he will be able to keep out of 
it. And yet, with all my pity for the labourer, 
whose day's wage pays for no more than the day's 
want, and hardly for that, I cannot say that a little 
more education, not only in the common school 
branches, but in his duty to himself, would not greatly 
improve his condition. Thousands of people of this 
class seem to have no more idea of their duty to the 
children whom they bring into the world than if 
they were rats. Only seven weeks ago a poor, 
Lard-working under-gardener, at a big house I 
know of, fell off an apple tree, and broke his right 
arm badly in two places. He had not a penny 
saved. All he earned was fifteen shillings a week. 
The parson of the parish helped him on a little, and 



170 MB. GOMM'S EXPEBIENCE 

one or two other gentlemen and ladies did the same. 
But what good was it ? In the meanwhile another 
man slipped into his situation, and in less than three 
weeks this poor devil lost all heart and hope. His 
means were exhausted, and we had to take him into 
the workhouse ; and not only him, but his wife and 
nine children. What right had he to beget nine 
children if he could not tide over three weeks with- 
out coming to the workhouse with the whole brood 
of them ? Do you call that honest or fair either to 
himself, his children, or to the poor-rate-payers 
of his parish ? I don't, and I won't, though you 
may think me heartless for saying so. If that 
man hadn't married and hadn't had nine children 
before he was able to support even himself, and 
allow a little margin for sickness and accident, he 
might Have had his margin to himself and tided 
over the evil day without burdening the parish or 
bringing ten innocent people into partnership with 
his misfortune. It is not right, let soft-hearted 
people say what they will. If such cases were not 
so very common I shouldn't have said a word about 
this one ; and it is only because they are the rule, 
and not the exception, that I mention them. It 
seems to me, and I know something of what I am 
talking about," [here the double M came out again 
clear and distinct,] " that the agricultural poor 
think no more of the duties they incur towards 



OF THE POOE. 171 

society when they marry than so many sparrows. 
This may seem harsh, but, God knows, I don't feel 
harsh to anybody except, perhaps, the professional 
tramps and the she-devils who howl and yell in 
the ward. And I think what I say is right. I own 
I can see no remedy." 

' ' I think I can see two," replied I ; " Education 
and Emigeation. The first will tend, if rightly ad- 
ministered, to diminish, if it do not remove, this 
particular kind of improvidence among the poor; 
and the second will provide a home for the overflow 
of our population. The world is wide enough even 
for improvidence, if men will take the whole world 
for their workshop. There are millions upon millions 
of fertile acres in every part of it only awaiting the 
willing hand to till them. The command of God to 
our first parents, f to increase and multiply and 
replenish the earth/ has not lost its force merely 
because the British Isles are too small for the 
fecundity of their people. Perhaps we may not be 
so far from solving these two problems as most 
people think. But we move faster than our fore- 
fathers, and I think the day will come when the only 
paupers in England will be the aged and infirm,, 
and when every strong man will be able to live 
respectably in it by his intelligent and educated 
labour, or to get comfortably out of it to some other 
land, where the chances are more favourable." 



172 EXPERIENCE OF TEE POOR. 

"I am afraid/' said Mr. Gomm ; " that I shall 
not live to see the day ; but I can imagine it, never- 
theless, and will certainly not be such a wicked 
and, I might say, such a false prophet as to pre- 
dict the contrary." 





MUSIC AND MISERY IN LONDON. 




HE more people love music, when it is 
good and comes to their call, the more 
they usually hate and abhor it when it is 
not good, and comes unbidden. Even 
the best of music, when it breaks suddenly upon 
the ear of one who is engaged in thoughtful labour 
or hard study of any kind, is not agreeable; but 
when discord, instead of harmony, bursts upon the 
outraged silence of the library, the studio, or the 
sick-room, then is music but another name for 
misery. 

Business lately called me to London for a week ; 
a consideration connected with its facile transaction 
led me to take up my residence in one of the streets 
branching southwards from the Strand to the river ; 
a quiet street to all appearance — a highly respect- 
able street, a street through which runs no omnibus, 
and into which no cab or other vehicle ever pene- 
trates, unless to set down or take up a fare, or to 



17-i MUSIC AND MISERY 

deliver the goods duly ordered. I had not been 
three hours within these peaceable precincts before 
I discovered that the transaction of business in this 
respectable street was simply impossible, I had 
been deceived by false appearances, and that as a 
residence it was a very pandemonium of discords 
and evil sounds from daylight until long after dark. 
The lodgers in every house — for it is. a street of 
private hotels and " apartments to let " — appeared 
to be like myself, people who had come from the 
country, but who, unlike me, were idle, and fond of 
the amusement to be extracted out of street music 
and street exhibitions. One particular day, being 
detained at home against my will, the thought struck 
me to note down from hour to hour the arrival and 
the departure of these nuisances, the nature of the 
torture they inflicted, and the encouragement or 
discouragement which they received from the lazy, 
the silly, or the generous inhabitants. The day 
was not an exceptional one, as I was informed by 
my landlady, but a fair sample of every day in the 
year. 

Half-past Eight. — Sitting down to breakfast and 
the newspaper, I hear a sudden and obstreperous 
outburst of brazen instruments, which makes me 
literally start to my feet and rush to the window to 
see what is the matter. It is a German band of 
twelve performers, all well dressed in uniform, and 



IN LONDON. 175 

wearing each, a semi- military cap. They set up 
their music-stands in the street, and play from 
printed and manuscript music. Their performances 
consist of overtures and pieces from popular operas, 
very excellently rendered. I am told that they are 
hired by one family to perform twice a week before 
the door, and that they supplement the gratuity 
or payment which they may receive for this service 
by such smaller contributions as they can collect 
elsewhere. They do not rely upon the crowd of 
bystanders, or upon voluntary contributions, but 
send round the youngest member of the party, who 
knocks or rings at the door of every house in the 
street, and, hat in hand, gathers whatever coppers 
the servant girls or others are inclined to bestow. 
He appears to be successful in about one house out 
of three. The performances continue for about 
twenty minutes, and would not only be tolerable, 
but commendable, if they took place in one of the 
parks at a seasonable hour, or if people were not 
compelled to listen to them unless they pleased. 

Nine o' clock. — A bulky Savoyard, ugly as a 
baboon, and as dirty, with a barrel-organ. He 
grinds, "Partant pour la Syrie," "Not for Joseph," 
and " Champagne Charlie." His tunes are such a 
nuisance that I put my hat on, go to the street 
door, and order him away. He pretends not to 
understand me. I speak to him in Italian, and let 



176 MUSIC AND MISERY 

him know that I shall hand him over to the police 
if he will not immediately desist from grinding. He 
swears and scowls. I reiterate my threat. He sees 
I am in earnest, and finally slings his heavy organ 
upon his brawny back, and sulkily departs, followed 
by the not very amiable wish on my part that he 
had his box of discords in his paunch instead of on 
his shoulders. 

Twenty minutes to Ten. — Eight sham niggers 
— white men with blackened faces — wearing the 
usual absurd caricature of negro costume which 
does duty in London and elsewhere, for the dress 
of the plantation negroes in the Southern States of 
America. The leader of the band does not blacken 
his face, but wears a mask to represent Punchi- 
nello. He is well made, agile, and a good low 
comedian. This party sings both comic and senti- 
mental songs, almost, if not quite as well, as the 
Christy Minstrels, whom people pay their half- 
crowns to hear. Windows are lifted right and left, 
and pence and half-pence rattle on the pavement. 
The cooks and servant girls appear to be the chief 
patronesses of the show. The niggers stay for a 
quarter of an hour, and march off at a sign from 
Punchinello. They evidently make a good thing 
of it, and are prime favourites. 

Half- past Ten. — Two young men, ragged and 
shoeless, invade the street, and sing, " We have no 



IN LONDON. 177 

work to do-o-o," with the usual drawl. They are 
not very successful, but far more so than they 
deserve, and get a solitary penny from the house 
that hires the brass band. Seeing they have no 
chance, they depart, to the great satisfaction, it is 
to be presumed, of everybody, even of the small 
children, and of the cooks and the housemaids. 

Eleven o'clock. — An old man, thinly clad and 
feeble, with venerable grey hairs, whistling, but so 
very faintly as to be scarcely audible. He presents 
so forlorn an appearance, and his idea of attracting 
anybody's attention by such a weakly performance, 
appears to me so absurd that I pity him to the 
extent of a penny. I throw it out to him wrapped 
in a piece of paper. He catches it in his hat, opens 
the paper, takes out the penny, and spits upon it three 
times (for luck, I suppose) , and goes on whistling. 
Poor old fellow ! He at least has not the power, 
even if he had the will, to make the street hideous 
with noise. It is possible that I should nofc have 
heard his faint attempt at music, if my attention 
were not specially directed to the subject, and am 
very doubtful whether any one else in the street is 
aware of his presence. 

Fifteen minutes past Eleven. — A drum. An 
abominable monotonous outrage. It is a Lascar 
beating the tom-tom, and every now and then 
breaking out into a moan, a whine, a grunt, a 



178 MUSIC AND MISERY 

shriek, or all these four diabolically blended into 
one. He is the most repulsive and savage-looking 
creature I ever beheld. Gaunt and wiry as a hyena, 
and with the same hideous expression of counte- 
nance, he strongly impresses me with the idea that 
he must be Nana Sahib, who massacred the women 
and children at Cawnpore, or some other Eastern 
scoundrel quite as detestable ; if prolific nature has 
ever yet produced a match to that specimen of her 
handiwork. There is no policeman to be seen, and 
I think if I were a policeman, I should be rather 
shy of tackling such an ugly customer. 

Five minutes past Twelve. — Another brass band, 
the performers boys and lads from the " Fatherland," 
who play so loudly and so execrably that I wish the 
" Fatherland " had them back again, or that Prince 
Bismarck would take hold of them for the next 
Sadowa or Sedan, that his own or his royal master's 
ambition or vanity may compel him to fight. They 
perform for ten minutes. At their cessation the 
silence is delightful. 

Twenty minutes to One. — A woman grinding a 
barrel-organ, with a baby fast asleep upon the top 
of it. The tune is the eternal "Partant pour la 
Syrie." When she ceases for a moment to collect 
pence the baby awakes : when she re-commences, it 
falls asleep again. She traverses the street slowly 
from end to end ; receives a penny. She then 



IN LONDON. 179 

mercifully, or perhaps hopelessly, makes her way 
out and grinds no more. 

Quarter past One. — An Italian boy, apparently 
of about fourteen years of age, with a hurdy-gurdy. 
He whistles to it as an accompaniment. The com- 
bination is horrible and past endurance. I go to 
the window and order him away. He stops whistling, 
to grin at me, and removes himself to the distance 
of two houses, where he recommences his per- 
formance. If there be a policeman in sight, I shall 
assuredly have him removed par force majeure. 
But no policeman has been seen the whole morning, 
and none is visible now. This young tormentor 
plagues me and the street for five minutes before he 
goes his way. I feel towards him, as I did in the 
case of his elder compatriot with the barrel-organ, 
that I should have been glad if his hurdy-gurdy 
were in his entrails, and persisted in remaining 
there and playing for a week ! 

Twenty minutes to Two. — Another Italian, with 
a barrel-organ and a monkey. The monkey very 
like a Fenian, the man not so good looking. Why 
does not the Re Galantuomo keep these lazy Italians 
to himself ? This fellow would make excellent food 
for powder. Two little children and a nursemaid 
at the opposite side of the street, seem delighted 
with the monkey; but what their opinion of the 
music is, I have no means of judging. 



180 MUSIG AND MISERY 

Half-past Two. — A performer on the cornet-a- 
piston, plays " The Last Eose of Summer/ 5 and 
" Auld Lang Syne," neither very well, nor very 
badly. His music brings up half-a-dozen female 
heads from the areas on either side of the way. He 
makes, what is in theatrical parlance called a succes 
d'esUme, but does not favour the street beyond ten 
minutes. 

A quarter past Three. — A lad in shabby High- 
land costume, exhibits a pair of legs that do not 
show to advantage, and plays villanously on the 
bag-pipes, the well-known air of " Bonnie Laddie." 
The cooks, housemaids, and children, seem to be 
well pleased ; but when he changes the air to the 
" Eeel of Tulloch," the joy of the little ones grows 
frantic. Three or four girls of eight or ten who 
have strayed down the street from some of the con- 
tiguous alleys on the other side of the Strand, get 
up a little dance on the pavement. A policeman, 
for the first time during the day, makes his ap- 
pearance. What he might have done, if the per- 
former had been a negro minstrel, singing the 
(C Chickaleery Cove," I know not, but he evidently 
neither admires the music of the bagpipes, nor the 
sight of the little children enjoying themselves ; so 
he orders away the piper in a manner that shows he 
is not in a humour to allow his authority to be 
trifled with. Resistance being hopeless the piper 






IN LONDON. 181 

departs and blessed silence once again prevails for 
a brief space. 

Five minutes to Four. — A blind old man, playing 
the violin, led by a young woman — possibly Ms 
daughter. His tunes are mostly Scotch, and miser- 
ably perverted. If no one were permitted to play 
an instrument in the streets without a licence, and 
if none but the blind were eligible for the privilege, 
the plague of minstrelsy in London might be bene- 
ficially diminished. I make a present of this idea 
to any metropolitan member who thinks well enough 
of it, to introduce it to the legislature. 

Ten minutes past Four. — Punch and Judy, the 
most popular theatrical performance that ever was 
invented, and known and enjoyed by millions, who 
never heard of Macbeth or Hamlet. The street 
suddenly seems to swarm with children, nor are 
older people at all scarce within two minutes after 
the familiar squeak. The policeman again turns 
up. He has apparently no objection to Punch, or 
if he has he makes none. The play proceeds ', and 
as it is opposite my window, I make the most of it 
— and if I must tell the truth, I enjoy it. The dog 
that appears towards the last act, is a first-rate per- 
former, cool and collected ; and when Punch hits 
him a little too hard, he fastens upon Punch's nose 
in a manner that impresses the audience with the 
idea, that he thoroughly believes it to be flesh and 



182 MUSIC AND MISERY 

blood. Good dog ! I should think that Punch 
clears about eighteenpence by this little interlude, 
sixpence whereof was mine, for I had been seen to 
laugh, and could not expect to enjoy such a luxury 
without paying for it. If the manager of this 
ambulatory theatre repeats his performance ten or a 
dozen times a day, with the same pecuniary results, 
he must make what is called <e a tolerably good thing 
of it." 

Five o'clock. — Barrel - organ, <c Champagne 
Charlie," " Not for Joseph," and " Adeste Fideles." 
No policeman. 

Twenty-five minutes past Five. — Barrel-organ. 
" Partant pour la Syrie." How I hate it ! Fol- 
lowed by " Adeste Fideles," which, if possible, I 
hate still more. No policeman. 

Six o'clock. — An old man with a fiddle; an old 
woman with a concertina ; and a younger woman 
with a baby at her breast. The young woman sings, 
and the older performers murder the music. This 
is even a worse infliction than the barrel-organ ; and 
lasts for about five minutes. Much as the street 
seems to love music, it evidently does not love this 
specimen of harmony, and not a single halfpenny 
rewards the trio. 

Twenty minutes past Six. — A man leading a 
Newfoundland dog, with a monkey riding on its 
back. The man beats a big drum to attract atten- 



IN LONDON. 183 

tion. Somebody rises from the dinner table, throws 
a bone into the street to the dog, which speedily 
unhorses, or I ought perhaps to say undogs the 
monkey, and darts upon the prize in spite of the 
opposition and the kicks of his master. The monkey 
performs several little tricks — holds out its paw for 
halfpence, mounts and dismounts at the word of com- 
mand, but not until the dog has crunched the bone 
and made an end of it, with as much relish as if it 
were flesh ; and is altogether so popular with the 
children and the servants, as to earn the price of a 
dinner for his owner. The monkey gets bits of cakes 
and ipple from the children, the dog gets another 
bont, with a little meat on it, and the partnership 
of tie man and two beasts, departs in peace ; to 
amuse the children somewhere else. 

&ven o'clock. — More mock niggers — seven of 
then. They sing " Ben Bolt," " Moggie Dooral," 
<c little Maggie May," and others, which, I presume, 
ar< the popular favourites. A family, just arrived — 
asis evident by the piles of boxes on the roof of the 
tvo cabs that convey them in detachments — and 
possibly fresh from the rural districts, where black 
ninstrelsy is rarer than black swans, stand at the 
vindows, and listen. To be seen listening is to be 
?een approving, and to be seen approving, means 
uoney. The minstrels are asked for a repetition of 
u Little Maggie May," and after compliance, receive 



184 MUSIC AND MISERY 

what looks like half- a- crown, as it flashes from the 
window to the hat of the leader. Half-a-crown is 
not much among seven, though it is evidently a 
much more liberal gratuity than generally falls to 
the lot of street musicians, if an opinion may be 
formed from the expression that gleams on the 
sooty and greasy face of the recipient. 

Half-past seven.— A barrel-organ. No policeman. 

Eight o' clock. — A woman, " clad in unwonanly 
rags/' with a thin weak voice, dolefully chauating 
" Annie Laurie." 

A quarter past Eight. — A barrel-organ. Police- 
man in the street, for a wonder; is told to 3xpel 
this performer, and expels him accordingly. The 
man persists in grinding as he goes up the street to 
get out of it. Ci Leave off," says the policenan, 
sharply, and in the tone of a man that means nis- 
chief if he be thwarted ; and the tune ceases. The 
policeman walks down the street, up again, md 
disappears, and in less than five minutes the or^an 
fiend — for such this particularly pertinacicus 
vagabond deserves to be called — re-enters iie 
scene of his discomfiture, and begins to griid 
away triumphantly at the ' ' Old Hundredth Psalm" 
I suffer him, in an agony of spirit, for a full tea 
minutes. He meets no encouragement, and retires. 
May he grind organs in Pandemonium for eve* 
and ever — Amen. 






IN LONDON. 185 

Nine o'clock. — The tinkling of a guitar, well 
played, succeeded by the rick full voice of a culti- 
vated soprano, singing tke old ballad, u Comm' 
through the Rye." Here, at last is something worth 
hearing. Looking out I see a well-dressed woman, 
with a small crowd around her. She next sings, 
' ' Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon," and renders 
it beautifully ; afterwards, " The Last Eose of Sum- 
mer," equally well, followed by ei Bonnie Dundee," 
sung with a spirit which would do credit to any 
stage. This person is, I understand, a protegee of 
my landlady, and visits the street regularly every 
week. She meets otherwise with very considerable 
encouragement. She has sought, but hitherto in 
vain, to obtain an engagement at the music halls. 
' ' One reason is," she says, " that negro melodies 
and comic songs by ladies are more popular than 
Scotch songs, or than sentimental songs of any 
kind, unless they are sung by a man or a woman 
with a blackened face." Another reason, perhaps, 
is her poverty, and the want of good introductions. 
My landlady says she is an honest girl, and has 
been well enough educated to read music and sing 
at sight. Can nothing be done for her ? I ask. 
"Many gentlemen," replies the landlady, "have 
been greatly pleased with her singing, and promised 
to exert themselves to get her an engagement of 
some kind, however humble, to take her out of 



186 MUSIC AND MISERY 

street singing ; but it has been all cry and no wool ; 
and nothing has come of it." 

A quarter to Ten o' clock. — A tremendous hulla- 
baloo ! and loud cries of C{ Awful murder ! awful 
murder ! Second edition — Second eddishon ! " I 
send down to know what is the matter. It is a sell 
— a sell — a palpable sell — and no murder at all; 
and the servant brings me up a fly sheet, printed 
on one side, like the halfpenny ballads. This costs 
a penny; and is the story — I quote literally — of 
" A married man caught in a Trap, or, the Lovers 
Detected — a Laughable Dialogue, which took place 
in a Railway Carriage, between a married gentle- 
man and a young lady in this town, which was 
overheard by a gentleman, who immediately com- 
mitted the same to writing." The " laughable 
dialogue " is not at all laughable, but vapid, silly, 
puerile, and utterly contemptible. Compared with 
the vendors of such swindling rubbish, who disturb 
the night by their vociferous cries, the most vil- 
lanous organ-grinder of Italy is a respectable man 
and a saint. If I had the making of the laws and 
the administration of them afterwards, I think such 
fellows as these would never be able to vociferate 
again, either on a false pretence or a true one, after 
they got out of my clutches. 

The above is a fair and true account, and an 
unvarnished tale of a day's music and misery in 






IN LONDON. 187 

London. The real music was not much ; the real 
misery was very considerable. Is there no remedy 
for such wrong ? Cannot a prohibitive duty be put 
upon Italians and Savoyards at the port of entry ? 
Cannot music, or the murder of music in the streets, 
by unauthorised performers be prevented ? Or if 
the children and the servants, and the idle people 
generally, must have street music, cannot the in- 
fliction be concentrated within a couple of hours 
every day ? People must not bathe in the Ser- 
pentine after eight in the morning ; why should 
people be allowed to make hideous noises anywhere 
and everywhere in the business hours of the day ? 







$i§|i 

- . 



THE MIRTH OF THE MILLION. 

DO not object to the rnirth of the 
million, or to mirth in anybody. I 
hold* that innocent joy is gratitude to 
Heaven, and that such mirth, in its 
proper season, is a duty which every one owes to 
himself. But to mirth that can only find its ex- 
pression in vulgarity, obscenity, or profanity, I 
object about as much as I do to any breach of the 
moral laws, which society agrees to punish. The 
mirth that finds its expression in music is, above 
all others, wholesome and beautiful ; but the vulgar 
mirth that desecrates music, or brings music into 
association with sentiments and expressions that are 
morally base and atrocious, I hold not to be good 
for the million, or for any one individual part 
thereof. Music in itself and by itself is of necessity 
pure. " Songs without words," or songs of which 
the melody is played upon an instrument, without 
any aid from the voice, are always more or less 



MIRTH OF THE MILLION. 189 

beautiful. Every tune gives some degree of plea- 
sure ; and no tune or melody can of itself, without 
association with human speech, convey to the mind 
any ideas that are not innocent. Music can express 
joy, hope, love, tenderness, sorrow, melancholy, 
martial ardour, and deep religious feeling" ; or by a 
discordant note, it may possibly express fear or 
anger. But music cannot convey the idea of in- 
decency, spite, malice, jealousy, hatred, falsehood, 
revenge, or any of the mean and wicked passions. 
All music, in fact, is sacred. It is only when 
vulgar, silly, or indecent writers of verse asso- 
ciate tunes to their compositions, that music be- 
comes linked in the mind with unworthy ideas. 
Music, in the case last mentioned, is in the pitiable 
plight of a Venus Aphrodite, dressed against her 
will in the dirty rags and foul garments of the 
street virago, or the harridan of the gutter. Of late 
years the love of music has very greatly increased 
among all classes of the English people ; though the 
blessing has been attended with some serious draw- 
backs. Among the chief of these has been a vast 
increase of so-called comic songs of the lowest 
order, which has operated very injuriously upon the 
taste and morals of the multitude. Before pro- 
ceeding further with the subject, let me state at 
once that I am no enemy of public amusements. 
I love to see people enjoy themselves. I like fun, 



190 TEE MIRTH OF 

provided it be funny. I like humour, provided it 
be humourous; and I highly enjoy wit, provided 
I can have it unadulterated with obscenity or pro- 
fanity. But I hate vulgarity and the habitual use 
of slang, and do not think that the language of 
thieves, or even of costermongers, is worthy of 
imitation. I prefer the society of gentlemen to that 
of " cads," and think that the crowning grace of a 
beautiful woman — without which all other charms 
and accomplishments are of no account — is modesty ; 
not simply of thought and dress, but of action and 
demeanour. There is no reason among any of these 
loves and hatreds, why I or any one else should not 
approve of music and song for the million, and of 
the Music Halls that have within the last few years 
sprung up in all the populous towns and cities in 
England. The Music Hall is the opera house of the 
poor, and if the poor, differing in this respect from 
the rich, enjoy their songs, their ballets, and their 
acrobatic gymnastics much better with an accom- 
paniment of beer and tobacco than without, there is 
no weighty reason why any sensible person should 
object to their recreation on that account : provided 
always that they keep within the bounds of sobriety 
and decorum. That the beer and the tobacco have 
a vulgarising and demoralising tendency is obvious 
enough ; but, on the other hand, it must be admitted 
that the hard-working multitudes of our busy age 






TEE MILLION. 191 

have too little opportunity and means of recreation 
to justify the rigid censor in objecting to a public 
taste which he is powerless to elevate,, provided that 
the bad taste leads to no offence against good 
morals. 

In the days when there were no Music Halls in 
London, and when urban and suburban taverns and 
public-houses were the resorts of tradesmen, clerks, 
mechanics and others who required amusement 
after their day's work, the comic muse was largely 
represented. There never was a time in England 
when gaiety and lightness of heart did not find 
expression in music. The songs, sentimental or 
comic, grave or gay, that pleased the English 
people before the days of Queen Elizabeth, have for 
the most part perished, but from the time of Shake- 
speare to our own, we know exactly the style of 
songs that amused our forefathers. Their comic 
songs were sometimes too free .and loose for a 
refined taste, and sometimes they were silly and 
affected ; but in the main there was a hearty humour 
and joyous wit about them, which removed them 
from the imputation of coarseness. Even up to so 
late a period as 1830, when Vauxhall Gardens, 
White Conduit House, and other places that were 
the direct predecessors of the Music Halls were 
open, the songs that were sung were not wholly 
adapted to the taste of " fast " men and women, or 



192 THE MIRTH OF 

of " cads" and costermongers. Sentiment was not 
utterly banished, and the comic songs, though not 
very elevated as specimens of English composition 
or graceful as specimens of English wit, had a 
certain spice of fun and humour about them, that 
amused without disgusting the hearer. A collection 
of such songs published in 1830 in three volumes, 
and entitled the " Apollo/' shows the wit that 
pleased the fancy, and the pathos that touched the 
hearts of the men and women of that day. The 
publishers took credit to themselves, not only for 
having carefully excluded from their pages u every- 
thing that could disgust the eye of modesty, or 
shock the ear of refinement," but for having " re- 
jected every composition, however popular, that 
was nothing but flimsy rhyme and jingling non- 
sense." It must be admitted, however, that this 
excellent rule of selection was not rigidly adhered 
to, and that a large amount of very flimsy non- 
sense, indeed, found its way into the pages of the 
Apollo. Edmund Waller, in the days of Charles II., 
thought it hard that he should be called upon " to 
swear to the truth of a song," and it would be 
equally hard if the writer of a song purporting to be 
comic, were not allowed the privilege of harmless 
nonsense — for nonsense may often be witty as well 
as funny ; and convey innocent pleasure, where 
good sense in a repulsive shape might fail to con- 



TEE MILLION. 193 

vey either pleasure or instruction. But nonsense 
is not to be confounded with inanity or stupidity, 
and especially with that lowest and vilest form of 
both, which borrows the language of pickpockets 
and cadgers, and knows no difference between 
mirth and blackguardism. And in this respect the 
comic nonsense of our fathers and grandfathers 
stands in very favourable contrast with the Music 
Hall nonsense that has recently sprung into favour. 
In the not very remote days when William IV. 
was King, sentiment was not considered, as of 
necessity, to be unmanly, unwomanly, or silly ; and 
the expression of honest love and disinterested 
friendship was not held to be inconsistent, either 
with delicacy or good sense. The songs of Dibdin, 
Burns, and Moore, continued to please all classes of 
the people, whether their nationality were English, 
Scotch, or Irish ; and shared with many newer 
favourites, who endeavoured to follow in the path 
they had traced, the applause of the town. Madame 
Yestris, Mrs. Humby, Mrs. Waylett, Mrs. Honey, 
Miss Love, Miss Foote, Miss Maria Tree, and others, 
though they lent their sweet voices to comic, as well 
as to sentimental song, never lent them to vulgarity, 
or soiled their lips with the slang of swellmobsmen ; 
and such singers of the other sex as Incledon, Bra- 
ham, Sinclair, Wilson, Phillips, Templeton, and 
Russell, endeavoured to elevate and adorn the art 

o 



194 THE MIRTH OF 

to which they devoted their lives, and never pan- 
dered to a crapulous and depraved taste. But in 
this respect we have changed for the worse. The 
most notable characteristic of the public songs of 
our day, as far as the Music Halls are concerned, 
is their utter intolerance of sentiment. If a tender 
or ennobling thought has to be expressed before a 
popular audience it has to be rendered acceptable 
to the debauched palates of cynics and rowdies by a 
touch of farce, such as is supplied by the simple 
expedient of translating it into the vulgarest idiom, 
or blackening the face and hands of the singer. To 
the negro minstrels, or to white men masquerading 
in negro character, has been relegated all the tender 
and romantic sentiment of popular song ; as if it 
were derogatory to the business-like character, and 
to the high intellect of a man with a white skin to 
sing sentimentally of anything' so ce spoony" as 
genuine affection or youthful faith and simplicity. 
These simulated negro songs, contemptible as they 
are in some respects, have a certain humour and 
pathos which render them superior to the comic 
songs which men with unblackened faces permit 
themselves to sing. There is here and there to be 
found in them a touch of manly and simple nature, 
which not even the garb or paint of cc niggerism" 
can wholly degrade. But when we come to the 
songs of the very funny vocalists whose business 



THE MILLION. 195 

does not require them to blacken their faces, and 
who conceive that the affectionate public loves them 
best under the familiar names of cc Joe/'' or " Tom/' 
or " Fred," or " Charlie," as the case may be ; we 
find an absence alike of nature, of pathos, of humour, 
and of wit. They are not able to approach even to 
the boundaries of farce : and in order to understand 
their descriptions, accurate or inaccurate, f ^of the 
manners of the day, the reader or hearer has to be 
familiar with the lowest phases of life in the metro- 
polis ; and be thus enabled to sympathise with the 
pursuits, feelings, modes of thought, of cadgers, 
costermongers, the least respectable class of servant 
girls, and of others of their sex still less respectable 
than they. By referring to the advertisements in 
the public press we find that three " splendid songs" 
called respectively <( Champagne Charlie," " Moggie 
Dooral," and the " Chickaleery Cove," which are 
described as having been sung before the Prince of 
Wales, at some Music Hall unnamed, ' ' by the special 
request of His Royal Highness." I turn to the col- 
lection in which these alleged favourites of royalty 
appear ; and find it described in the publisher's pre- 
face as " a collection of gems that have called down 
upon the singers the most vociferous applause, that 
have found their way to the barrel organs, and been 
sung at the corners of every street." The critic is 
thus enabled to pass judgment upon the taste and 



196 THE MIRTH OF 

humour which grace the comic muse of London in 
our day, and which are supposed to find admirers not 
alone among the needy and the seedy, the illiterate 
and the vulgar, with an occasional sprinkling of 
" cads and swells," who may be vulgar but are not 
illiterate, but among the highest and best educated 
classes. " Champagne Charlie" the first in the 
series, is the description of a disreputable " swell," 
with more money than brains, who haunts all the 
" supper room# ; of London, f{ from Poplar to Pall 
Mali," and treats every girl he meets with as much 
champagne as she can drink. 

Champagne Charlie is my name, 
Good for any game at night, my boys, 
Who'll come and join me in a spree? 

The ' c lady's version" of this composition — said 
to be sung by a " lady" in public, and to be adapted 
to the use of u ladies" in private, varies the chorus : 

Champagne Charlie was his name, 
Always kicking np a frightful noise, 
Kicking up a noise at night, my boys, 
And always ready for a spree. 

Comment upon such a song is as needless as any 
remark upon the taste and manners of the so-called 
" ladies' - ' who either applaud or sing it. 

" Moggie Dooral" is stupider, if possible, than 
' ' Champagne Charlie ; " but as it was originally a 
song of the i{ negro minstrels," and came from the 



THE MILLION. 197 

other side of tlie Atlantic, it cannot be fairly placed 
to the discredit of London, unless for the minor 
offence of extending its favour and popularity. The 
first stanza will suffice as a specimen : 

Once a maiden fair, 
She had ginger hair, 
With her tooral, looral, la ! di ! oh ! 
And she fell in love, 
Did this turtle dove, 
And her name was Dooral, 

Moggie Dooral, 

Cockie-Dooral, 

Hoopty Dooral, 

Tooral, looral, 
Silly noodle, oh ! my ! 

This " nigger" song depends for its success on 
the blackened faces and hands, and on the good 
comic acting of the singers, who endeavour — and 
not unsuccessfully' — to make it grotesque. 

The " Chickaleerie Cove" or the " Chickaleerie 
Bloke" — it is known under both titles — is the 
climax of the three royal favourites, for dismal and 
revolting offensiveness. The language is not to be 
understood without a garotter's or a burglar's glos- 
sary to explain the u slang" the Cl flash," the " cant," 
and the C( rommany," with which it is interlarded. 
One stanza will be more than sufficient as a spe- 
cimen. " Chickaleerie," it appears, stands for 
Whitechapel, and " bloke" is nineteenth century: 



198 THE MIRTH OF 

English for man, or for a thing that so calls itself 
when it does not call itself a " swell." 

I'm a Chickaleerie bloke with my one, two, three, 

Whitechapel was the village I was born in, 
For to get me on the 7wp, or on my tihby drop, 

Yon mnst wake np very early in the morning ; 
I have a rorty gal, also a knowing pal, 

And merrily together we jog on, 
I do not care SbflatcJi, as long as I've a tatch, 

Some pannum for my chest and a tog on. 

Let those who will, refer to Mr. Hotten's " Slang 
Dictionary" for an explanation of the strange words 
in this thieves' vocabulary. For myself I can say, 
that with every disposition to be tolerant, to make 
allowances for defects of education and for evil cul- 
ture, and above all with a desire to discover a soul 
of goodness in things evil, it is difficult to under- 
stand how any one claiming, even on the most in- 
adequate pretence, to possess an average share 
of human intelligence can take pleasure, with or 
without the accompaniment of beer and tobacco, in 
the hearing or the reading of such inane trash as 
this. I have heard it pleaded &s some excuse for 
the disgraceful success of these songs, that the 
melodies to which they are sung" are lively, and that 
the public of the Music Halls tolerates the words 
for the sake of the music. There is undoubtedly a 
certain truth expressed in this view. But the main 
question remains unaffected by it. What is to be 



THE MILLION. 199 

said of the popular taste which, under any circum- 
stances or for any reason, tolerates the words at all ? 
A great portion of the very thin, attenuated, and 
all but imperceptible "fun" of the comic songs 
of the present day, or at least of such of them as 
flourish at the Music Halls, consists in calling 
women " feminines," or tc female women." To take 
a walk with a " feminine" on a Sunday, or to be 
jilted by a li false feminine," and to relieve the mis- 
fortune by " gin," or a flirtation with a " new 
feminine," or to steal down the area of a gentle- 
man's liouse to visit a <c feminine," or a " female 
woman/ who acts as cook, and to be regaled by her 
on the cold beef and mutton of her master, until the 
alarm is raised that the <c missus" is coming, when 
the visitor is safely stowed away in the coal cellar 
until the danger of discovery is past ; these are the 
telling hits at the Music Halls, if the Music Hall 
song-bocks tell the truth. Of course the policeman 
does not escape caricature when any little incident 
of this kind is to be described ; though if the comic- 
song4>ooks are to be believed, not only policemen, 
but mechanics, linen- drapers' assistants, and mer- 
chants' or lawyers' clerks, are just as fond of the 
cook's mutton as the policeman, and just as ready 
to descend to low manoeuvres and mean arts to get 
a share of it. It is not that this picture of the un- 
married portion of the lower stratum of the youth 



200 THE MIRTH OF 

of the middle class in our age is a true one -, but it 
is the fact, that it should be accepted as true, and 
laughed at as such, that shows the deplorable vitia- 
tion of the popular taste of London. 

Anyone who enjoys such literary offal may find 
it at the Music Halls, where one performer is said 
to earn his thousand or fifteen hundred pounds a 
year, and rides in his brougham from one place to 
another, singing the same song eight or ten times 
in the evening, to new and delighted audiences. Or 
if any investigator recoil from such haunts, Le may 
read comic song-books, closely protected by a copy- 
right that will not permit the infringement or piracy 
of anything so valuable — and so ignoble. 

The all but worn-out saying of the nameless friend 
of Fletcher of Saltoun, who, in the days before news- 
papers, declared that he would rather be tie song- 
writer than the law-giver of the people, has a side 
to it that its first utterer never imagined ; for if the 
song-writers of the people are of the class that pro- 
vide the Music Halls with their mirth and their 
morality, the administrators of the law, if not the 
law-makers, are likely to have extra work. When 
the song-writer teaches virtue, celebrates true love, 
exalts patriotism, and has no ridicule to throw ex- 
cept at the harmless follies and small vices of the 
people, he is a power in the state. When he re- 
verses the process, sneers at virtue, ridicules the 



TEE MILLION. 201 

great and the heroic in character, and borrows, as 
his choicest vehicles of expression, the language of 
burglars and beggars, he also becomes a power in 
the state, but a power for evil. The greater the 
popularity which he achieves, the more serious the 
mischief he causes. The English were said, by the 
old French chronicler, to amuse themselves sadly ; 
and anything sadder, in every sense of the word, 
than the comic songs that are popular in London is 
difficult to imagine. 





FLIES AND MOSQUITOES. 




ONSEN SE ! " said my tenderest friend 
and life-companion, when I told her, as 
I always do, what I was going to write 
about. cc You cannot possibly find any- 
thing to say about flies." This was my wife's first 
impression of the matter. cc I should think," I re- 
plied, Ci that a good deal might be said about flies, 
and their uses in the economy of creation.'-' " No 
doubt," said she ; " but flies are a nuisance, especially 
those horrible mosquitoes, from which we suffered 
so much in America. Indeed, now I come to con- 
sider it, I think you might write something read- 
able about those dreadful pests. I think the plague 
of flies, that afflicted Egypt when Pharaoh would 
not let the Israelites go free, must have been a 
plague of mosquitoes/' u Very likely," said I ; 
" and then you know that one of the names given 









FLIES AND MOSQUITOES. 203 

to the devil is Beelzebub, or the Lord of the Flies.'' 

" I wish he had them all in his own dominions, 

then," rejoined my wife. " What, all the flies ? " 

I inquired. " Would you banish the bees and the 

butterflies in all their innumerable varieties of 

beauty, and the flying beetles, and the fire-flies that 

make night brilliant in warm latitudes ? " " No," 

she replied. " I was wrong. I would only banish 

the common flies and the mosquitoes." " Then I 

will write about common flies and mosquitoes, and 

leave the bees and the butterflies alone." 

The busy, impertinent, buzzing little creature, 

known in most parts of the world as The Fly, is 

chiefly remarkable for its incessant cheerful activity, 

and for its constant thirstiness. It seems to have 

a love for everything that is succulent and sweet. 

In this respect it is honourably distinguished from 

the culex, or gnat family, of which there are no less 

than thirty varieties in the British Isles, none of 

which have any taste for sweets, nor any relish for 

anything except the blood which they suck from 

the pores of animals. The house-fly is a veritable 

dipsomaniac : 

Busy, thirsty, curious fly, 
Thou shalt drink as well as I, 

says the old convivial chant ; and, in this predilec- 
tion for drink, the fly very much resembles the 
toper who apostrophises him. Nothing potable 



204 FLIES AND 

comes amiss to Mm — from wine to brandy, from 
milk to water. Like man in search of his gratifi- 
cation, little musca continually comes to grief. At 
the breakfast-table he dips into the tea or coffee 
cup, if he have a chance, and is often scalded to 
death for his temerity. He darts from the sugar- 
basin to the cream-jug, and not unfrequently falls 
into the clammy liquor and is drowned for his gree- 
diness. Sitting alone at breakfast one morning, at 
a country inn, with nothing particular to do, and 
with no newspaper or book to read, I amused myself 
by extricating an unfortunate fly from the cream 
into which it had fallen, and placed it upon the 
table-cloth to live or die, as fate, not I, might de- 
termine. It was not in my power to do anything 
more for my small fellow-creature. Its wings were 
clogged, for the cream was not London cream. It 
had not lain in this unhappy condition above a 
minute, when another fly was tempted to take a 
look. Whether the new comer understood the real 
state of the case, or whether it was too fond of 
cream to refuse to taste it, even when clotted over 
the body of a moribund brother, is not easy to de- 
cide ; but putting out its little proboscis, it began 
to suck vigorously at the cream. Nor was it left 
alone to its enjoyment, or to its work of mercy, 
whichever it may have been, for it was speedily 
joined by five or six other flies, who all sucked 






MOSQUITOES. 205 

away so busily at the cream on the legs, wings,, and 
body of my little friend, that it soon began to turn 
and flutter. Ultimately it rose on its feet, rubbed 
its two fore-legs together, as a happy man rubs his 
hands, and finally flew away as briskly as if nothing 
had happened. 

It is the constant thirst which besets the fly that 
not only leads it into danger, but which principally 
renders it so troublesome in summer, whether to 
man or other animals. The fly settles upon your 
hand or face, not to suck your blood for a drink, 
like the mosquito, the gnat, or the midge, and, 
worst of all, the gallinipper, but simply that it may 
slake its thirst at the pearly drops upon your skin 
— visible and tempting to the fly, though invisible 
to yourself. When bent on an object of this kind, 
the perseverance of the fly is wonderful. Nothing 
but death will keep it away from you. Driven off 
for a moment, it returns to the charge, brave in its 
ignorance; with effects on the temper which are 
sometimes comic to a bystander. An irascible 
Anglo - Indian in his despair, once seized a poker 
to demolish a bluebottle. ' ' I smashed the window," 
he exclaimed triumphantly, "but never mind — I 
killed the fly ! " 

Naturalists tell us that the fly is stone-deaf — in 
this respect unlike the bee, which swarms to the 
noises made upon warming-pans or other metallic 



206 FLIES AND 

implements. But nature is always kind. The blind 
man receives compensation in the increased power 
of his other senses, especially that of touch ; and in 
like manner our deaf little friend, the fly, can see 
both behind and before, and cannot be taken wholly 
unawares. The inconvenience suffered in our dwell- 
ings from the common house-fly is not great in the 
latitude of England, unless to grocers, butchers, and 
fishmongers ; but in the middle and southern states 
of North America they are often as great a plague 
as mosquitoes. They tumble into your tea, your 
soup, your lager-beer, your wine, your gravy ; they 
fasten upon every damp spot on the table-cloth in 
scores and hundreds; they cover every article of 
food, and defile your windows, your mirrors, your 
picture-frames — everything that is bright and shiny 
— and are the despair of the good housewife. You 
may catch them with fly-papers, and attract them 
with a light by a very ingenious ' ' Yankee notion," 
and so kill them by countless thousands ; but their 
numbers never seem to diminish. Nothing but the 
cold weather has any effect in staying the plague. 
The weakest are killed off by myriads when the 
frost comes, and the strongest betake themselves 
out of sight into little holes and corners of the walls, 
outside and in, or in the bark of trees, and compose 
themselves to sleep until the summer comes again. 
The fly, like the dormouse, the bear, and many 






MOSQUITOES. 207 

other living creatures, hybernates. u Sleep/'' which 
Sancho Panza says ' ' covers a man all over, thoughts 
and all, like a cloak," performs the same kindly 
office even for these unconsidered pests. Some- 
times a gleam of sunshine in November or Decem- 
ber wakes up a fly from his nap. The rash insect 
thinks that summer has come again, crawls out, 
shakes itself, and makes a melancholy attempt to be 
lively and happy. The adventurer generally pays 
with its life the penalty of its ignorance, and never 
sees summer nor lumps of sugar more. 

Field-flies are not very troublesome in England, 
except to horses and cattle. They are mostly of a 
larger species than the domestic fly, and are con- 
siderably more ferocious and pertinacious. I was 
once coming down from the top of Goatfell, in the 
Island of Arran, one of the loveliest of the Western 
Isles, when I was suddenly attacked by a cloud of 
flies a little larger than the domestic fly. The cloud 
was certainly a cube of fifteen or twenty feet, and 
must have contained millions of flies. They fol- 
lowed me for miles in my progress down the moun- 
tain towards the little hostelry of Brodick, and fas- 
tened upon every exposed part of face and neck, 
to drink in the moisture that hard exercise had 
brought out over all the surface of my body. I 
unloosed my plaid from my shoulders to swing it 
around me like a flail to scare away the invaders. 



208 FLIES AND 

In vain ! In vain ! One down, a thousand came 
on. I clapped my hands together in the midst of 
the cloud, and slew my hundreds at every coming 
together of my palms. It was of no use. You 
can't frighten a fly, you can only kill him. On 
they came — on, for ever on, like the rushing of 
Niagara ! At last I struck into a belt of plantation, 
thickly wooded with fir and larch, where my tor- 
mentors seemed to lose their way; for in five 
minutes I was disembarrassed of them, much to 
my satisfaction. Since that time I have learned to 
sympathise with horses in vehicles pursued by flies 
for miles, in defiance of the whip of the driver ; and 
to admire the friendly arrangement of two horses in 
a field. cc Stand with your haunches towards my 
head," says Dobbin to Bobbin, "and brush away 
the flies from my ears with your beautiful long 
tail, and I will do the same good turn for you." 
" Agreed," says Bobbin to Dobbin; and so they 
stand for hours under the shadow of trees in the 
sultry summer heats, mutually helpful, and doubt- 
less quite aware of the convenience as well as fair- 
ness of the bargain. 

The first great use of all flies in the economy of 
nature seems to be to act the part of scavengers, 
and consume the decaying animal matters, or ex- 
cretions, that are not good above ground — though 
they would be excellent under ground, if it were 



MOSQUITOES. 209 

worth any one's while to put them there. The next 
is, that they shall supply food for birds and fishes. 
What is the use of the ephemera ? They are born, 
grow old, and die in one day ; they seem to do no- 
thing in their short lifetime but dance in the sun- 
shine, as if there were not a particle of sorrow in 
their little world — a large world enough for them. 

A singular circumstance has lately been reported 
by scientific men on the subject of the domestic fly 
of Europe and America. Everybody knows that 
the civilised man is, and always has been, more 
than a match for the savage; and that before the 
continually encroaching steps of the Anglo-Saxon 
and other European races — but more especially the 
Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian — the aborigines of 
the American continent, of the Cape of Good Hope, 
of Australia, and New Zealand, have been gradually 
disappearing. If two races refuse to amalgamate, 
the weaker goes to the wall. Civilisation is too 
much for savages, and they retire from its presence, 
only to linger a little while in the land of their 
fathers, conscious of their inferiority, and driven to 
the grave at last. That this should happen in the 
case of men is not very surprising, but that it should 
happen in the case of house-flies, is not a little re- 
markable. Dr. Haast, a Fellow of the Linnasan 
Society, writes to Dr. J. D. Hooker, from New 
Zealand, that not only does the European drive 



210 FLIES AND 

away the Maori or aboriginal inhabitant, but that 
the European house-fly drives away the New Zea- 
land fly. Of two evils, New Zealand colonists prefer 
the less, and as the spread of the European insect 
goes on slowly, they are actually importing house- 
flies in boxes and bottles to their new inland sta- 
tions. Is it that all living things that are much in 
the society of, or in immediate contiguity to man 
in a high state of civilisation, have their faculties 
sharpened by the association — sharpened, as it 
were, by danger, and the necessity of protecting 
themselves against such formidable foes ? Is it that 
similar animals and insects in wild countries, where 
men are few, are not so highly educated by adverse 
circumstances, not so acute, clever, and wary ; and 
that when superiors of their own race are brought 
into contact with them, the weaker flies before the 
stronger, as we see it among men ? 

Enough for the present on the subject of the fly. 
To please my wife, I turn to the mosquito, a crea- 
ture which has not yet made its appearance in the 
British Isles (it is to be hoped it never will) , but 
which has several near relations amongst us in the 
culex family, of which the gnat and the midge are 
the best known members. Mosquito is a Spanish 
word signifying a little fly. Though it be little, it 
makes up for deficiency of size by abundance of 
venom. Some of the fairest portions of the globe 



MOSQUITOES. 211 

are rendered all but uninhabitable by these " pesky" 
insects. The mosquito, and his big brother the 
gallinipper, which is said to be able to sting into 
your leg through the leather of your jack-boot, 
though they do not altogether banish mankind from 
the warmer countries of the temperate zone, render 
those regions particularly uncomfortable in the sum- 
mer days, and, above all, in the summer nights, 
when they not only "murder sleep," but in the 
woods have sometimes been known to murder the 
sleepers. 

Let me ask the reader to accompany me, in 
spirit, to a little cottage which I once occupied in 
an island on the coast of America — one of the 
most compact and beautiful little islands that the 
sun shines upon — and hear what is to be said 
about " skeeters," as many Americans call the mos- 
quito for shortness. The cottage is a "frame," or 
wooden one, substantially built for winter as well as 
for summer habitation, and with a broad verandah 
in the front and on the eastern side, on which some 
English people — myself and wife among the num- 
ber — and some Americans are seated in the cool of 
the evening . Before the verandah extends a flower- 
garden, beautifully laid out, and a reach of ground 
sloping for about a mile towards the Atlantic. Be- 
hind it are three acres of forest land ; two of which 
are almost in the condition of the aboriginal wilder- 



212 FLIES AND 

ness, and contain some stately fir-trees, under the 
shadow of which the Eed Indians may have erected 
their wigwams, smoked the calumet of peace, or 
dug up the war-hatchet for bloody fight. The other 
acre is laid out in a series of kitchen-gardens, which 
yield a bountiful crop of most of the vegetables 
known in Europe, and of several others which the 
English climate is not sunny enough to produce in 
the same excellence and profusion. Among others, 
the oyster-plant, the egg-plant, the tomato, and the 
ochra ; the latter famous as the main ingredient of 
a delicious soup called iC gumbo." The verandah 
— the pleasantest part of the house, and which in 
these American cottages and villas is the favourite 
resort of the family in the sultry afternoons of sum- 
mer — is overgrown with roses and creeping vines 
of almost every variety, among which the bignonia, 
or trumpet-vine, is conspicuous for its beautiful red 
flowers. 

As we are new to the country, this being our 
first summer in these sunny latitudes, we notice 
many things that escape the attention of the 
natives, as we sit in the verandah, look towards 
the ocean, and survey the scene around us. Most 
lovely is the clear blue sky, without a speck of 
cloud to relieve the monotony of the deep cerulean. 
The mercury in the thermometer stands at ninety- 
six degrees in the shade, and were it not for the 



MOSQUITOES. 213 

whiff of tlie pleasant wind that creeps over the 
waters of the Atlantic, laden with freshness, the 
heat would be oppressive. As it is, the ice-pitcher 
is a valued friend, and the fan an inseparable com- 
panion, not only for the sake of the coolness which 
its motion imparts, but for its utility in driving 
away mosquitoes. Were it not for these intolerable 
plagues, the climate would be greatly preferable to 
that of England ; but mosquitoes are a daily and a 
nightly misery. " There is a soul of goodness in 
things evil/' I said to a neighbour, an American 
lady of English parentage who had come to our 
verandah -, " and the all-wise Creator has made 
nothing in vain. Yet with the fullest faith in this 
doctrine, I could never find out of what use the 
mosquito was, or what were its purposes in the 
great scheme of the world." " Perhaps not/' re- 
plied the fair one ; " but may not that be your own 
fault, Mr. Philosopher ? In the first place, mos- 
quitoes breed in the marshes. May they not teach 
us the necessity of draining the marshes, and 
carrying off the stagnant waters, so as to increase 
the arable service of the land ? In the second 
place, mosquitoes, in countries where there are no 
marshes, breed in the running streams ; the larvse 
of the mosquitoes are the favourite food of young 
trout. And if you are fond of trout, why should 
the trout not have his dinner of mosquito larvse, to. 



214 FLIES AND 

be fatted for your enjoyment ? In the third place, 
the sting of the mosquito inoculates against the 
attacks of fevers that are prevalent in all marshy 
and undrained countries ; and surely a mosquito- 
bite is better than a fever, Mr. Philosopher ?" It 
is always in vain to argue with a lady, so I said 
no more, inwardly content that so much could be 
urged in behalf even of the pestilential little crea- 
ture, which was in those days a veritable thorn in 
the flesh of me and mine. 

The mosquito has the treacherous habit of flying 
low. If you sit in your drawing-room (parlour 
it is always called in the United States) in your 
slippers, or in your library or study, if you are 
fortunate enough to possess one, in your dressing- 
gown and slippers, you will not be aware, if you 
are a new comer in the land, what brings the 
blains and swellings on your instep, and all the 
portions of the leg and foot of which the stocking 
is the only defence. The cause is the mosquito. 
He flies near the carpet, sees with microscopic eye 
through the interstices of the woollen fabric, inserts 
his tube of suction into the flesh, and draws out as 
much blood as he needs for his thirst. If it ended 
there, no great harm would be done ; but after he 
has drunken at your expense, he drops a little 
venom into the pore which he has opened: and 
the result is irritation, which you are prompted to 



MOSQUITOES. 215 

relieve by counter-irritation, and constantly increas- 
ing inflammation of the envenomed part. The best 
alleviator is spirits of hartshorn — a phial of which 
most people who know the bane and antidote take 
care to have in readiness both at bed and board. 
As for me, I was compelled to relinquish the wearing 
of slippers, and retain my boots to the last moment 
before going to bed ; not exonerated even then from 
the mosquitoes, which maliciously fastened upon the 
space — if I sat cross-legged — between the top of 
the boot and the trousers, and sucked and poisoned 
at their will. Ladies, less protected, suffer more 
than men in this respect. It is not to be under- 
stood that the mosquitoes confine themselves to the 
floor. They fly in every stratum from floor to roof; 
and bite whenever they get a chance. At night, 
sleep would be liable to painful disturbances, were 
it not for the mosquito-nets, which envelop the 
beds of all prudent sleepers. Even then, the diffi- 
culty is to prevent a mosquito or two from getting 
under the net while the bed is being made. If one 
enters, there might as well be a hundred. The 
evil is done ; and if the intruder be not expelled, 
sleep is impossible. He peals a triumphal horn in 
your ear as he settles upon your forehead ; and you 
might almost as successfully attempt to catch a 
flash of lightning in your hand, as to try to catch 
a mosquito. 



216 FLIES AND 

The only way to be freed of this persecution is 
to hunt them by daylight. They generally settle 
upon the walls and ceiling, where a sharp and ex- 
perienced eye can readily detect them. The most 
approved and successful mode of dealing with them 
is to get a common hair broom, and tie over the 
hair a wet cloth or towel, and dab the implement 
suddenly against the mosquito. This kills him, and 
does not alarm his fellows. With a little patience, 
keeping the doors and windows closed meanwhile, 
that none of the same tribe may enter, a careful 
servant or housewife can effectually clear a bed- 
room in ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, and 
render sleep possible. In the Southern States the 
mosquito is developed in the swamps into the galli- 
nipper — a great torment of the human race, but a 
greater torment to the brute creation. Sometimes 
a horse or ox, engaged in agricultural work in the 
fields, is clad in trousers — two pairs of course — to 
guard its legs from this maddening scourge — the 
driver himself being tolerably well protected if he 
have a pipe in his mouth ; for both mosquito and 
gallinipper detest the fumes of tobacco, and keep 
at a respectable distance from an earnest smoker. 
Pioneers in the wilderness, land-surveyors, geolo- 
gists, naturalists, and others, who have to explore 
new regions, become so accustomed and hardened 
to the mosquitoes and gallinippers as to think little 



MOSQUITOES. 217 

of them ; but it is the pipe or the cigar by day, 
and the camp-fire by night, which keeps them at a 
distance ; or no amount of familiarity with the 
nuisance would ever reconcile anybody to its in- 
fliction. But Europe and America, though subject 
to pests like these, are comparatively happy. The 
grievance, if great, is to be borne; and a galli- 
nipper, atrocious as he is, is an angel of grace and 
mercy compared with a fly called the seroot, which, 
Sir Samuel White Baker tells us, infests Abyssinia. 
" The animals," he says, " are almost worried to 
death by the countless flies, especially by that 
species that drives the camels from the country. 
This peculiar fly is about the size of a wasp, with 
an orange-coloured body, with black and white 
rings ; the proboscis is terrific ; it is double, and 
appears to be disproportioned, being two-thirds 
the length of the entire insect. When this fly 
attacks an animal or man, it pierces the skin in- 
stantaneously, like the prick of a red-hot needle 
driven deep into the flesh, at the same time the 
insect exerts every muscle of its body by buzzing 
with its wings as it buries the instrument to its 
greatest depth. The blood starts from the wound 
immediately, and continues to flow for a consider- 
able time; this is an attraction to other flies in- 
great numbers, many of which lay their eggs upon 
the wound." 



218 



FLIES AND MOSQUITOES. 



Better to endure the ills we have, than fly to 
others that we know not of. Better English flies 
and gnats, better American mosquitoes and galli- 
nippers, than such a flying fiend as the Abyssinian 
seroot. 





THE PHYSIOLOGY OF HAND- SHAKING. 

ANY people read character by the shape 
of the skull; almost everybody intui- 
tively and instinctively reads it in the 
countenance ; some affect to be able to 
discover it in the handwriting of persons whom they 
have never seen ; while a few are of opinion that it 
may be ascertained by the manner in which a man 
shakes hands. Of all these modes of studying cha- 
racter that of physiognomy is the most to be de- 
pended upon. The soul is the source of all beauty, 
and never deceives ; and the face upon which the 
soul has imprinted an unpleasing expression may be 
safely held to be the face of one who is, more or less, 
deficient either in intellect or in virtue. Never- 
theless — and as an aid to, and not a substitute for, 
physiognomy — there is much to be said for hand- 
shaking, as a means of deciding whether he or she 
who offers or accepts this act of friendly courtesy, 
is cold or warm-hearted, indifferent or cordial, sin- 



220 THE PHYSIOLOGY 

cere or hypocritical, or whether he is really glad to 
interchange courtesies with yon, or only pretends 
to be so. 

How did people first get into the habit of shaking 
hands ? The answer is not far to seek. In early 
and barbarons times, when every savage or semi- 
savage was his own lawgiver, judge, soldier, and 
policeman, and had to watch over his own safety, in 
default of all other protection, two friends or ac- 
quaintances, when they chanced to meet, offered 
each to the other the right hand — the hand alike of 
offence and defence, the hand that wields the sword, 
the dagger, the club, the tomahawk, or other wea- 
pon of war. Each did this to show that the hand 
was empty, and that neither war nor treachery was 
intended. A man cannot well stab another while 
he is engaged in the act of shaking hands with him, 
unless he be a double-dyed traitor and villain, and 
strives to aim a cowardly blow with the left, while 
giving the right and pretending to be on good 
terms with his victim. The custom of hand- shaking 
prevails, more or less, among all civilised nations, 
and is the tacit avowal of friendship and goodwill, 
just as the kiss is of a warmer passion. 

" Give me your hand, you shall, you must ! I 
love you as a brother ! " has been written of one 
who was brave, noble, true - hearted, and not 
ashamed of honest poverty in himself or others. 



OF HAND-SHAKING. 221 

When two such persons meet, each knowing" the 
good qualities of the other , the shake of the hand 
which they give and receive may be considered the 
perfection of all that this mode of salutation should 
be — neither too warm nor too cold, but full of sym- 
pathy and satisfaction. 

Ladies, as every one must have remarked, seldom 
or never shake hands with the cordiality of gentle- 
men ; unless it be with each other. The reason is 
obvious. It is for them to receive homage, not to 
give it. They cannot be expected to show to per- 
sons of the other sex, a warmth of greeting* which 
might be misinterpreted ; unless such persons are 
very closely related to them by family, or affection, 
in which cases hand-shaking is not needed ; and the 
lips do more agreeable duty. 

Every man shakes hands according to his nature, 
whether it be timid or aggressive, proud or humble, 
courteous or churlish, vulgar or refined, sincere or 
hypocritical ; enthusiastic or indifferent. The nicest 
refinements and idiosyncracies of character may not 
perhaps be discoverable in this fashion, but the more 
salient points of temperament and individuality 
may be made clear to the understanding of most 
people by a better study of what I shall call the 
physiology or the philosophy of hand-shaking. 

Some people are too " robustious" to be altogether 
pleasant. They take the offered hand with the grasp 



222 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF 

of a vice, and as if they had with malice prepense, 
resolved to squeeze all the delicate little bones of 
your knuckles into pulp or mince meat. And while 
the tears of agony come into your eyes, and run 
down your cheeks, they smile at you benignantly, 
like gentle giants, unconscious of their strength, 
and of the tyranny with which they exercise it. 
Many of them are truly good fellows, and mean all 
the cordiality of which their awful squeeze is the 
manifestation. They would exert all the strength 
that goes to waste in such hand-shaking in rescuing 
you from danger, if you were in it, or in doing 
battle against your enemies, if you were assailed by 
superior numbers. Yet when such seemingly cor- 
dial good fellows manifest the same cordiality to- 
wards people whom they met for the first time 
yesterday, and towards those with whom they may 
have been intimate for a half or a quarter of a cen- 
tury, it is impossible to avoid a suspicion that they 
act from habit, rather than from the ebullition of 
heart, and that their mighty squeeze ought to be 
taken quantum valeat. But of all the men to be 
avoided, he who squeezes your hand in this excru- 
ciating fashion, on a false pretence, is the worst. 
He dislocates your joints to convince you of an un- 
truth, that he loves you very dearly, and as soon as 
you are out of sight, forgets you, or thinks that you 
are no " great shakes" after all, or, worse still, 



HAND-SHAKING. 223 

abuses you behind your back to the next acquain- 
tance whom he meets. Hint, in his turn he serves 
in the same manner, and gradually establishes for 
himself the character, which he well deserves, of 
being a snob and a humbug of a particularly offen- 
sive type. 

Another, and even more odious kind of hand- 
shaker, is he who offers you his hand, but will not 
permit you to get fair hold of it : 

With finger tip he condescends 
To touch the fingers of his friends, 
As if he fear'd their palms might brand 
Some moral stigma on his hand. 

To be treated with the cool contempt, or supercilious 
scorn which such a mode of salutation implies, is 
worse than not to be saluted at all. Better a foe- 
man, with whom you feel on terms of equality, than 
an acquaintance — he cannot be called a friend — 
who looks down upon you as if he were a superior 
being, and will not admit your social equality with- 
out a drawback and a discount. It sometimes hap- 
pens, however, that this result is due to the diffidence 
of the shakee rather than to the pride of the shaker. 
If a timid man will not hold his hand out far enough 
to enable another to grasp it fairly, it is his own 
fault, and betrays a weakness in his own character, 
and not a defect in that of him who would be 
friendly with him. 



224 TEE PHYSIOLOGY OF 

Another hand- shaker whose method is intolerable, 
and with whom it is next to impossible to remain 
on friendly terms, is the one who offers yon one 
finger instead of five, as mnch as to say I am. 
either too pre-occnpied in myself, or think too little 
of yon, to give yon my whole hand. With such 
a man the interchange of any bnt the barest and 
scantiest courtesy is rendered difficult. Friend- 
ship is wholly out of the question. 

To give the left hand to the man who offers you 
his right, or to present the left hand for the purpose 
of a friendly greeting is a piece of discourtesy — 
sometimes intentional on the part of superiors in 
rank to their inferiors, and an act that no true 
gentleman will commit. There is no reason why it 
should be considered more discourteous, than it 
would be to kiss the left cheek instead of the right ; 
but doubtless the custom that makes the right hand 
imperative in all sincere salutation dates from those 
early times when hand-shaking first began ; and the 
hand that shook or was shaken in friendship was of 
necessity weaponless. The poor left hand, that one 
would think ought to be of as much value and 
strength as the right, just as the left foot or leg is 
as strong as the right foot or leg because they are 
both used equally, has fallen into disrepute as well 
as into comparative disuse, until it has become an 
accepted phrase to say of any proceeding that is 



HAND-SHAKING. 225 

inauspicious, artful, sly, or secretly malicious, that 
it is " sinister" — that is, left handed. 

To shake hands without removing the glove is 
an act of discourtesy, which, if unintentional and 
thoughtless, requires an apology for the hurry or 
inadvertence which led to it. This idea would also 
seem to be an occult remnant of the old notion that 
the glove might conceal a weapon. Hence true 
courtesy and friendship required that the hand 
should be naked as a proof of good faith. 

To be " hand and glove " with any one is a pro- 
verbial expression, of which the meaning is not 
obvious, though possibly it may signify such a 
degree of confidence, intimacy, and familiarity be- 
tween the parties as to make it certain that the 
gloved hand is as free from an offensive weapon as 
the ungloved. 

To refuse pointedly to shake hands with one who 
offers you the opportunity in a friendly manner 
amounts to a declaration of hostility. And after a 
quarrel — or act of open hostility — the acceptance 
of the hand offered is alike the sign and the 
ratification of peace. 

The nations of continental Europe are scarcely 
so much addicted to hand-shaking as the English, 
while the English in this respect are far less de- 
monstrative and apparently cordial than the Ameri- 
cans, who shake hands with one another from 

Q 



226 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF 

morning to night, if even the slightest excuse or 
opportunity arises. " Since my arrival in the 
United States/' wrote the late Mr. Smith O'Brien, 
" I have been surrounded by crowds of well-wishers, 
whose greatest desire seemed to be to shake hands 
with me. In Ireland this practice does not prevail, 
but here it seems to be a universal custom." All 
travellers are equally struck with the undue pre- 
valence of this custom, as they cannot fail to be 
after they have been a few days in the country. 
The stranger, if a man of any eminence or renown, 
is often introduced to forty or fifty people at a time, 
and to omit to shake hands with any one of them 
would be an act of disrespect. And even the Irish 
and German waiters at the great hotels expect you 
to shake hands with them, on your second arrival, 
if they happen to remember your face or name, or 
have received a gratuity at your hands for their 
previous services or attentions. And you must 
shake hands with the dirty as well as with the clean, 
and with your tailor or shoemaker, equally as with 
the man who invites you to dinner. 

One of the greatest penalties attached to the by 
no means enviable office of president, is the 
stupendous amount of hand-shaking which that 
functionary has to undergo. The late good-natured 
President Lincoln was a serious sufferer, though it 
must be confessed that he often gave some too im- 



HAND-SHAKING. 227 

portunate hand- shaker such a squeeze of his power- 
ful grasp as made him wince, and remember him 
with pain for a few hours after the infliction of his 
cordiality. Both he and other occupants of his 
uneasy and thankless office have, on New Year's 
Day, especially, and on many other occasions, to 
undergo an amount of hand-shaking, sufficient al- 
most to wrench the arm off, or at least to make it 
ache for a fortnight afterwards. Five or six thou- 
sand people of all ranks and classes of men — from 
the polite European ambassadors and diplomatic 
agents at Washington — and the legislators, bankers, 
merchants, lawyers, newspaper editors and re- 
porters, the military and naval officers, down to the 
common soldiers and sailors, and, lower still, down 
to the very rowdies and roughs of the street, are all 
admitted without the intervention of a gold stick or 
any other kind of stick, or a black or a white rod, 
or any kind of usher or introduction, and in any 
costume they please, even in that of the navvy with 
his heavy boots and his working jacket, or the 
sweep with the soot still on his face; — though it 
must be admitted as a rule that the rowdies, the 
sweeps, and the navvies, put on their best clothes 
on such great occasions. All of them pass through 
the reception hall, and each expects to shake hands 
with the chief magistrate. 

To shake five thousand hands in succession, and 



228 PHYSIOLOGY OF HAND -SHAKING. 

to betray no indifference or want of cordiality in 
the mode of doing it — to even the humblest of the 
owners of the hands — is no easy task, either 
physically or mentally. Were not ambition more 
powerful to impel a man to seek high station than 
love of formal ease, to keep him comfortable in a 
lower walk of life, it is possible that many an aspiring 
politician, after he has become president, would 
gladly resign the office, to escape the hardships and 
inflictions — the hand-shaking not the least of them 
— that must be accepted along with it, like the 
thorns with the roses. 

I have nothing' to say against hand-shaking. It 
is pleasant to touch the hand of an honest man or 
woman, and to be on such terms of acquaintanceship 
with either of these masterpieces of creation, as to 
justify you in the thought that you are their equal ; 
and that a moral sympathy may flow from you to 
them, or from them to you. Even to grasp the 
paw of an honest and intelligent dog, who holds it 
up for you to shake, on being asked to do so, is 
something. For the dog, unlike some men, would 
scorn to give his paw to one, in whose eye, and in 
whose face, he, by his fine instinct, in some respects 
the equal, if not the superior, of reason, discovered 
treachery or evil. 




THE LEFT HAND : A PLEA FOB, THE 
NEGLECTED. 




§ T may be Quixotic ; but I must do battle 
in behalf of my Dulcinea. In this 
age, it is said that there is no wrong 
without a remedy. This I deny. I am 
positive, however, that there is no wrong, great or 
small, which, when pointed out, will not elicit a 
groan from somebody — or impel some philan- 
thropist — or it may be, some mere grumbler, to 
wag his tongue or dip his pen in ink, to set forth 
their grievances. It is not only the wronged but 
the neglected that find friends in our days. We 
redress, or strive to redress, the wrongs of history. 
Has not Richard the Third had his defenders and 
advocates ? Has not Jack Cade been proved to be 
a gentleman ? Has not Macbeth been whitewashed 
of the crime of murder ? and have not even those 
despised little creatures the toads, been taken 



230 THE LEFT RAND. 

under tlie protection of philosophers, relieved of 
the charge of being poisonous and disgusting rep- 
tiles,, and recognized as the harmless fellow-labourers 
of the gardener and cultivator ; a friend who de- 
vours for him the too prolific insects that consume 
the tender roots and shoots of his vegetables ? 
And as for the neglected portions of the human 
race, do not the British Parliament and the British 
press continually ring and overflow with their sor- 
rows, and with the woful catalogue of the dangers 
that will or may afflict society if justice be not 
done ? The wrongs of children, the wrongs of 
women, the wrongs of paupers, the wrongs of 
lunatics — the wrongs of dumb animals — find zealous 
tongues and printing presses to set them forth ; 
but I look in vain for any one to say a word on 
behalf of my client — a client in whose condition 
and treatment the whole human race is interested ; 
men and women, old and young*, the wise and the 
unwise, the civilized and the savage, in every clime 
and country under the sun. As I said before, it 
may be Quixotic in me. But I wage battle in 
defence of my Dulcinea, the Left Hand. 

How is it that this excellent member of the 
human body is treated with an amount of neglect 
and injustice greater than is bestowed on any 
other ? We make no distinction in our favours 
between the right eye and the left. The one can 



THE LEFT HAND. 231 

see as well as the other ; and the left eye can appre- 
ciate the charms of a lovely woman or a beautiful 
landscape as well as the right. The left ear is as 
acutely susceptible of the sounds of pleasure or of 
pain as the right ; and the left nostril scents the 
perfume of rose and lily as completely as its twin- 
brother on the other side of the face. In walking, the 
left leg does as much duty as the right ; and I have 
yet to learn that there is any difference between the 
left foot and the right, when they are alternately 
planted on the ground, either in running, leaping, 
or walking ; and whether they do not equally well 
sustain the whole weight of the body, when the 
body requires their support. But, between the 
right hand and the left there is an appreciable 
difference — a difference which I maintain to be the 
work of art, of prejudice, of habit, and of igno- 
rance ; and not of nature. It is true that the doctors 
sometimes tell us that the position of the heart on 
the left side of the body renders it desirable that 
we should not use the left hand so frequently and 
so constantly as the right, lest we should, somehow 
or other, damage, or weary, or interfere with the 
action of that most important organ. This is a state- 
ment which I, for one, should feel more inclined to 
respect, if the same reasoning were applied to the 
left leg. But the doctors do not go this length ; 
and, with all deference to their superior knowledge 



232 THE LEFT HAND. 

of anatomy and physiology, I am unconvinced and 
incredulous on this subject, and think that the 
heart is made the scapegoat of a weakness of which 
it is not guilty ^ and that the left hand is the inno- 
cent victim of an unreasonable delusion. 

The name in England of this neglected member 
of the human form divine is highly suggestive of 
the wrong committed against it. It is called the 
" left " because it is left out of the proper course of 
work and business ; left out of consideration ; left 
to neglect, and even to scorn. The Eomans called 
it " sinister," the French call it " gauche/' and the 
Germans <{ links "j none of which words convey the 
English meaning of abandonment. But, on the 
principle, too often and too commonly at work in 
the world, of giving a dog a bad name and then 
hanging him, the word sinister, applied to the poor 
left hand, has come to signify any course of pro- 
ceeding that is dark, wicked, or malignant. A 
man with a " sinister " expression of countenance 
is held to be the reverse of amiable or agreeable ; 
and a u sinister " report, or rumour, is one that is 
laden with evil. To do a thing " over the left " 
means not to do it ; a " left-handed " compliment 
is an insult in disguise ; and a ' c left-handed mar- 
riage " is either no marriage at all, or a marriage 
which the lord of the creation who contracts it is 
much too high and mighty to avow. The " bar- 



THE LEFT HAND. 233 

sinister " in heraldry signifies illegitimacy ; and 
" left " being in one sense the opposite of " right/' 
has been held, with the grossest injustice, to be 
that other opposite of right which is designated as 
i( wrong." When a man or woman is unfortunately 
in the position of a witness in a Court of Justice, he 
or she is told to hold the Bible in the right hand, 
before kissing the Book — as if the left would 
vitiate the sanctity of the oath. The Mahomedans 
in a similar spirit, will not even touch the Koran 
with the left hand, on the most ordinary occasions. 
Poor left hand ! 

All faculties of mind and body suffer impairment 
and diminution from disease. ~No man or woman 
in civilized society can turn his or her ears back- 
wards and forwards to catch a sound in either 
direction, as all wild animals can who live in 
a state of constant alarm or danger from their 
enemies. The savage Aborigines of the American 
continent, and other wild tribes in every part of 
the world, where men are compelled to rely upon 
their own vigilance and strength for protection 
against opponents, possess this faculty, which their 
European and other compeers, accustomed to rely 
upon the law and upon the police for their security 
against aggression, have completely lost. In like 
manner the blind, who are deprived of the most 
precious of all the faculties, are endowed with 



234 TEE LEFT HAND. 

a more exquisite sensibility of touch, and hearing, 
than people who can see, simply because they are 
driven by painful necessity to cultivate and make the 
most of such faculties as remain to them. One who 
is deprived of bis right hand, very speedily learns 
to use the left, and to apply it to every purpose 
of dexterity or skill, till he makes it as efficient as 
its fellow. Children, when they first begin to take 
notice of the world in which they live, so commonly 
use both hands alike, that they have to be corrected 
by their parents and nurses, and to be taught syste- 
matically to give the right hand the preference in 
conveying the food to their mouths, and never to 
let the left hand do that which it is the custom of 
society to perform with the right. We are told in 
the Book of Judges, that during the fearful civil 
war between Israel and the tribe of Benjamin, there 
were seven hundred chosen men of the latter who 
were left-handed, and that every one of these 
warriors could " sling stones at an hair's breadth, 
and not miss." Thus each man was worth two in 
battle, because he had been trained to make his left 
hand equal to his right. If seven hundred men 
could have been thus educated, why not seven 
thousand, or seven hundred thousand, or the whole 
human race ? There is no reason, but habit, pre- 
judice, and fashion; for the doctor's reason, apropos 
of the heart, I shall take the liberty of considering 



THE LEFT HAND. 235 

to be unfounded until it shall be satisfactorily 
proved in the case of any left-handed man or 
woman, that the action of his or her heart has 
been injuriously affected by his or her ambi-dex- 
terity. 

Of course all argument is vain on this subject. 
The old cannot learn, and the young will not. Be- 
sides, it may be replied that, all things considered, 
the world gets on very well as it is, although it 
only uses one half of the manual skill with which 
Nature has endowed the lordly race that has subdued 
and replenished it. All this is true. Yet did not 
the world get on very well with oil-lamps, stage- 
coaches, Margate hoys, and the semaphore, and 
without gas, railways, steam-ships, and the electric 
telegraph ? Let us be contented, however, and let 
us rejoice that fashion and prejudice have not done 
to the left eye, the left ear, the left nostril, the left 
leg, and the left foot, the injustice they have done 
to the left hand. 

And, after all, the whirligig of fashion and pre- 
judice has its revenge as well as the whirligig of 
Time. If the male half of the world does such in- 
justice to itself as to sacrifice fifty per cent, of its 
working power, the female half of the world takes 
up the co-equal limb that has been scorned, and 
makes it a beauty and a joy for ever. On the 
fourth finger of the hand which is not so greatly in 



236 THE LEFT HAND. 

danger of collision with the hard facts and hard im- 
plements of toil, as the hand that does the daily 
work of the world, the woman places the symbol of 
marriage, the plain gold ring, which it is the glory 
of a trne woman to be privileged to wear ; happiest 
of all the happy she, if conjugal love on her part, 
and that of her husband, be as unalloyed with false- 
hood and change as the pure gold is with dross ; 
and if the circle of their mutual confidence and 
affection be as complete, and without a break in its 
continuity, as the little circle which on the long 
wished-for bridal morn her spouse placed upon her 
finger. It is a variety of the same old medical 
superstition, that has so largely helped to bring the 
left hand into disuse among mankind, that has 
helped the better and fairer half of mankind to 
make amends for the injustice done it. " The wed- 
ding ring," says an ancient author, " is worn on 
the fourth finger of the left hand, because it was 
formerly believed that a small artery ran from this 
finger to the heart. This," he adds, "is contra- 
dicted by experience ; but several eminent authors, 
as well Gentiles as Christians, as well physicians as 
divines, were formerly of this opinion 3 and, there- 
fore, they thought this finger the properest to bear 
this pledge of love, that from thence it might be 
conveyed, as it were, to the heart. Levinus Lem- 
nius, speaking of the ring finger, says that a small 



TEE LEFT EANB. 237 

branch of the artery and not of the nerve, as Gellius 
thought, is stretched forth from the heart to this 
finger, the motion whereof, you may perceive, evi- 
dently in all this affects the heart in woman by the 
touch of your fore-finger. I used to raise such as 
were fallen in a swoon by pinching this joint, and 
by rubbing the ring of gold with a little saffron, for 
by this a restoring force passeth to the heart, and 
refresheth the fountain of life with which the finger 
is joined. Wherefore antiquity thought fit to com- 
pass it about with gold." 

In our day the rubbing* of the gold ring with a 
new dress, or with a set of diamonds, might possibly 
be more effective than the rubbing with saffron. 
But let that pass. The right hand may be given in 
marriage, but as far as the ladies are concerned, it 
is the left hand that confirms and seals the bargain. 





A GEEAT AND A MIGHTY CITY. 



HE great and mighty city of which I am 
about to narrate a few particulars is 
neither London nor Paris,, nor New 
York, nor Pekin, but a far more popu- 
lous city than any of them. London and its sub- 
urbs may contain between three and four millions 
of people, Paris half the number, New York about 
a third, and Pekin about as many as London, per- 
haps a million or two more, for we can never tell 
how the Orientals reckon, or whether a million in 
their fervent imaginations may not sometimes do 
duty for a tenth part of the number. But my city, 
considering the size of its inhabitants, is relatively 
larger, and positively more populous than any of 
them, or perhaps the whole of them combined. Its 
inhabitants are industrious and intelligent, and not 
only know how to build cities, but how to govern 
them. My city stands upon the top of a hill, 
within twenty-five miles to the south west of 



A GREAT AND MIGETY CITY. 239 

London. Geographers make no mention of it. 
The county historians know it not. In vain would 
the eye of a traveller seek to obtain a glimpse of it 
from afar. Not a trace of it is to be seen from the 
railway station that stands within a mile of its 
multitudinous domes (towers and steeples it has 
none) , and he who wants to pay it a visit must look 
very carefully about him before he can discover it. 
Around it are thick woods and plantations of box, 
juniper, and beech, and on the comparatively bare 
summit of the hill on which it stands are acres of 
fern and bracken, mingled with patches of purple 
heather that would do no discredit to the breezy 
slopes of Ben Lomond. The domes constructed by 
the inhabitants range from one to two feet in 
height, and look like diminutive wigwams. Some 
of them are of fresh earth, recently turned up, and 
others are old and overgrown with the short grass 
and moss of many summers. Not a sound audible 
to human ears is heard in these populous parishes, 
for each dome may be considered a parish, or a 
borough, of this very great city ; and during the 
winter months, from November to April, not only 
is there no sound, but no motion, or sign of life. 
Within it all the busy millions compose themselves 
for hybernation when the leaves begin to fall from 
the trees, and sleep snugly and comfortably, without 
waking or even turning in their beds. But though 



240 A GREAT AND 

beneath the sod, and accessible to the influences of 
the frost, the frost only makes their drowsiness the 
more dense ; and if by chance — but there is no 
chance in these matters — they were as deeply en- 
sconced in the bosom of mother earth as to be 
unsusceptible of the winter's cold, they would also 
be unsusceptible of the summer sunshine, and fail 
to awake at the time appointed. This never happens. 
When the soft, warm rains of spring penetrate into 
the ground, and the trees and flowers begin to 
spread forth their tender shoots to the warm sun, 
the teeming population of the city turn in their 
beds, burst into renewed life and activity, and 
begin to devote themselves to their customary 
avocations — to marry and be given in marriage, 
and, it must be added,, to develop e schemes of am- 
bition and conquest, and to lay the foundations, just 
as England is doing in a different way, though with 
possibly the same animating motives, of new colonies 
and empires. These industrious creatures, who 
possess some of the intelligence and a good many of 
the vices of humanity, for they are exceedingly war- 
like and quarrelsome, are the ants, the emmets, or 
the formicans, whose singular civilisation and mode 
of life have been observed with curiosity by natu- 
ralists in all ages, and more especially by Huber, a 
German philosopher of the last century, who de- 
voted the best part of his life to the study. Huber 



A MIGHTY CITY. 241 

is their historian and philosopher, and all subsequent 
inquirers but confirm his facts and strengthen his 
opinions. 

One noticeable thing about the ants — though it 
is not peculiar to them, but is shared with many- 
other creatures — is that they are utterly insensible 
of the presence of mankind. They neither see nor 
hear him, nor are in any way conscious of his 
existence,, though it is quite evident from their 
actions that they are endowed with the senses of 
sight and feeling, and possibly of smell and hearing, 
and that they have a means of communicating to 
one another their wants and ideas. But man is 
utterly beyond their sphere. Even when he ruth- 
lessly pulls down or otherwise disturbs them in 
their haunts, or levels with the ground the domes 
of their cities, they are not aware of what or who 
their enemy is, though they feel and are alarmed at 
the physical force which the unknown power exer- 
cises to their detriment. If a bulky monster a 
thousand feet high, and stout in proportion, were 
to walk through Hyde Park, all the human emmets 
of Tyburnia and Belgravia would be aware of his 
perilous presence, and strive to get out of his way ; 
but if I or any other human creature cross the line 
of march of an army of formicans — which I for one 
have often done — they take no notice of the mons- 
trous apparition, which is to them invisible. They 

E 



242 A GREAT AND 

cannot see an inch before their mandibles, and the 
great foot of humanity may tread thousands of 
them to death without causing the least alarm in 
the multitudes immediately before or behind the 
moving mountain that makes such terrible havoc. 
But if any one will take a spade or a stick, and 
penetrate into one of their mounds, or domes, the 
busy agile community will understand that there is 
danger abroad, and the whole surface thus exposed 
to the light will immediately swarm with many 
thousands of the little black and brown creatures, 
all running hither and thither in the most palpable 
alarm, and each bearing a cocoon bigger than itself , 
in which a baby emmet is awaiting the next stage 
of its development into maturity. It was formerly 
believed by unscientific and careless observers, in 
modern as well as ancient times, that these cocoons 
were grains of corn, to which in shape as well as 
size they bear a great resemblance; and that the 
ants, when disturbed, were not so much alarmed 
for their lives as for the safety of their winter pro- 
vender. But, as the ants sleep all the winter, and 
require no food, another explanation was required, 
and science discovered the fact that this grain-like 
treasure is no other than the rising generation of 
formicans, and that each adult member of the com- 
munity enacts in these seasons of peril the part of 
the Eoman matron, who considered children the 



A MIGHTY CITY. 243 

first objects of her care, and more valuable than all 
the treasures and jewels of the world. 

The citizens of this " great and mighty city/' on 
the top of the hill, who know nothing of man and 
his ways, are not, like the human race, divided into 
two sexes — but into three. In this respect the ants 
resemble the bees, among whom, also, there are 
three sexes, or perhaps, more properly speaking, 
two sexes ; and one, by far the larger part of the 
community, which is sexless and unprolific. Both 
the males and females are comparatively few in 
number ; and during the short period of their hey- 
day and prime of life, are very much respected and 
pampered by the barren and hard-working majority. 
The males and females are the aristocracy of the 
republic. Like the lilies of the field, " they toil not, 
neither do they spin." They enjoy a short life and 
a merry one; are the pets and favourites of the 
multitudes during their short appointed time ; are 
endowed with many privileges and marks of honour ; 
until they have done all that Nature intended they 
should do, when they are solemnly, perhaps reveren- 
tially, put to death, as being of no further use to 
the state of Formica. The male aristocrat possesses 
four wings ; the female possesses only two, smaller 
than those of the males, and lose even these at the 
end of the period of their maternity ; and the mules, 
neuters, sexless, nursing, and laborious ants, which 



244 A GREAT AND 

are without wings altogether. But though the male 
ants doubtless think themselves very fine with their 
double set of beautiful gauze-like wings, they are 
something like the jeunesse doree among men, who 
can neither provide for their own subsistence, nor 
defend themselves when attacked. They have 
neither mandibles nor stings: consequently, they 
either die of neglect when their function is per- 
formed, or are stung to death by the working- 
classes. Who among us would be a (c swell " at 
such a price ? The female ants are peculiar in the 
matter of their single pair of wings. However 
valuable or ornamental these may be in the happy 
period of their courtship and marriage, they appear 
to be incumbrances, or of no account, when mater- 
familias has grown old. She discards them (which 
dowagers in human life do not always do with their 
finery, when they have fallen into the sear and 
yellow leaf ) ; and makes a considerable and possibly 
painful effort to be rid of them. "This curious 
process which," says a writer in the Penny Cyclo- 
paedia, "was first hinted at by Gould in his in- 
teresting account of English ants, we have re- 
peatedly witnessed ; the females extending their 
wings, bringing them over their heads, crossing 
them in every direction, and throwing them from 
side to side, till at length they are disjointed from 
the body and fall off. Those who are desirous of 



A MIGHTY CITY. 245 

verifying the observation must procure winged 
females immediately after pairing, and place them 
under a glass with some moist earth." 

In the construction of their mounds or ant-hills 
— a duty which is left to the neutral or sexless for- 
micans, and with which the males and females have 
nothing to do — a great deal of skill, ingenuity, and 
perseverance is displayed. The formica fusca, or 
yellow ant, constructs a mound of earth, which it 
raises to the height of a foot or more above the soil, 
with a diameter varying from six inches to two feet, 
according to the number of the population, and the 
space required for their accommodation. They 
quarry out the earth with their mandibles, always 
choosing rainy weather for the purpose, lest the 
dry and too friable soil should tumble in upon their 
avenues and passages, and block up their cells or 
houses. The formica rufa, or wood ant, builds his 
cities and mounds in a different style, and may be 
considered more of a carpenter than of a mason. 
He collects small twigs, sticks, straws, and stalks of 
grass and bent, with which he builds up a dome 
that is doubtless as large, imposing, and magnifi- 
cent to his eyes, as the domes of St. Paul's or St. 
Peter's are to the eyes of mankind. In the interior 
of one of them, about three feet high and three feet 
in diameter, there is accommodation for about as 
many formicans as there is accommodation in Paris* 



246 A GREAT AND 

for Parisians. If the population become too great 
for the space, and press upon the means of subsis- 
tence, as in England, Ireland, and Germany, the 
formicans, whether they be red, black or yellow, 
resort to emigration — to an America of their own 
— and a swarm of workers set forth, taking care to 
carry some aristocratic males and females along* 
with them. In due time a new dome, either of 
earth or twigs, according to the nature and instinct 
of the tribe, is reared by the colony. Another 
and another succeeds, just as suburb after suburb is 
added to London, or state after state to the Ameri- 
can Union, in which these wonderful little folk live 
the lives that all- wise and all - bounteous Nature 
intended. 

The care of the young among them, as among 
their human superiors, is a very important matter, 
and is entirely left to the sexless or nursing ants. 
Paterfamilias dies and makes no sign. Materfami- 
lias, after she has laid her eggs, cares very little 
about them, even if she cares at all, which some ob- 
servers have doubted. The working ant, however, 
comes to the rescue — and lest the city should be 
depopulated, after they themselves have ceased to 
be, look after the prospects of a new generation 
with the greatest care and tenderness. The ant 
eggs, unlike those of other insects, do not adhere 
by their viscidity to any fixed place, but lie loosely 



A MIGHTY CITY. 247 

in parcels of eight or ten. In fine weather, when it 
is not too hot, it is the duty of the nursing ants to 
remove the eggs to the top of the mound or the 
hillock, for the sake of the vivifying warmth of the 
sun, and to carefully remove them inside at night, 
if the weather threatens to be cold and stormy. 
When the eggs are hatched into grubs, the nurses 
feed them with a liquid which they disgorge from 
the stomach. It is when this duty has to be per- 
formed that ants become most voracious. They 
seem to share with man, the sparrow, and the 
ostrich, the faculty of being omnivorous. They 
will make their way into the heart of apples, pears, 
and other fruits that have fallen upon the ground, 
and into strawberries that have not fallen, but are 
conveniently grown within their reach. They will 
pick bones of beef, mutton, and poultry, and by no 
means disdain fresh fish, or red herring. They will 
eat bread, sugar, or any other waifs and strays of a 
household ; or if they be not near a household, and 
no such dainties are attainable, they will perform 
the part that the crab plays in the sea, and eat the 
dead bodies of beetles and other insects, or such 
animals of the woods that come in their way ; and 
will soon leave the bones of a dead mouse, mole, or 
squirrel, as bare as a specimen in the British Mu- 
seum. Their favourite food, however, seems to be 
honey, and those juicy portions of flowers which the 



248 A GREAT AND 

bee selects for the manufacture of this article. They 
are also partial to " honey-dew/' x which, by the 
way, has no relation to honey, but is a sweet filmy 
substance ejected and thinly spread over the leaves 
of many plants by the aphis, or puceron, of which 
there are many varieties, some of which infest the 
rose, some the hop, some the cabbage, some the 
turnip, and all of which are known under the gene- 
ric appellation of "fly," or "blight.'-' When the 
grubs, after a due course of feeding by the nurses, 
have grown large and strong enough for the pur- 
pose, they set to work and spin for themselves a 
"cocoon," before mentioned, about as large as a 
barleycorn, in which they lie dormant until the time 
comes when they are to ( ' burst their cerements " 
and become complete formicans, entitled to all the 
rights of citizenship in the republic. But even in 
this the last stage of their adolescence, the care of 
the nurses is not withheld. Whether the cocoons 
contain males, females, or neuters, it is all the same 
to the busy little working creatures ; they are ants, 

1 Coleridge, in his beautiful Dream Poem of " Kubla 
Khan," seems to have had but vague notions of honey-dew, 
when he exclaims 

Weave a circle round him thrice, 

And close your eyes with holy dread : 
For he on honey-dew hath fed, 

And drank the milk of Paradise ! 



A MIGHTY CITY. 249 

whatever they may be, and if they are too weakly, 
as often happens,, to make their way out of their tem- 
porary grave-clothes, the affectionate and anxious 
nurses bite holes in the cocoon, by means of which 
the imprisoned captives may emerge into life, light, 
and liberty. After this process, each individual 
has to shift for itself, subject to the unalterable 
laws of the community, and become a male or a 
female aristocrat, or a member of the working- 
classes, as Fate and Nature intended. 

It is well established by the researches of Huber, 
and confirmed by the observations of other philoso- 
phers and students during the last hundred years, 
that the formican republics not only make war 
against each other, for purposes surmised rather 
than known, most probably for no better reason 
than those which prevail among men — difference 
of tribe, race, or colour ; but that when their own 
working classes diminish unduly from disease or 
accident, they invade the neighbouring mounds and 
hillocks, and, if successful in their aggression, take 
the vanquished into captivity, and compel them to 
aid the victors in the every- day work of the state. 
And they not only make war for the sake of obtain- 
ing adolescent or adult captives, but they form ex- 
peditions to carry off the cocoons of a community 
that has been more prolific than their own. The 
battles of the ants have often been described. Those 



250 A GREAT AND 

who are curious to learn more about them will find 
information in all the encyclopaedias, as well as in 
the writings of the worthy Huber, who nearly 
seventy years ago first gave to the world the re- 
sults of his studies on the formicans, and enabled 
the encyclopedists to draw upon him for stores of 
information which, but for his reverential curiosity 
and patient assiduity, might never have been known 
or suspected. 

Instead of going over this old ground, which 
possibly may be familiar to many who read these 
lines, let me describe what I myself saw among a 
colony of wood ants, or formica rufa, to which 
nothing similar is recorded by Huber or the en- 
cyclopaedists. The battles of the ants, and the 
building of their cities, their care for the perpetua- 
tion of the race, are facts of every- day occurrence, 
and may be seen by all who have the time or the 
taste for such small, but highly interesting studies. 
My experience was accidental, and perhaps all the 
more curious on that account, and what I saw, 
proves the possession of something more than in-. 
stinct, and of something very much like reason, in 
these strange little beings. I stayed for a day and 
night a few summers ago at the little inn of 
Rowardennan in Dumbartonshire, at the foot of 
Ben Lomond, of which, with two companions, I 
proposed to make the ascent at the first favourable 



A MIGHTY CITY. 251 

opportunity. We walked out in the evening after 
dinner, proposing to scale the sublime altitudes of 
the Ben in the morning, if the day promised to be 
fair, and on the skirt of a large plantation of larch 
and fir, we came suddenly upon a very large ant- 
hill, surrounded at short distances by several others, 
somewhat smaller than itself. It was composed 
mainly of twigs, straw, and pine spiculse, and 
swarmed with insect life. Poking our walking- 
sticks into the top of the mound, and laying bare 
the upper surface, the formicans, who, up till then 
had been wholly unaware of our presence, began to 
understand that calamity had come upon them. 
Betaking themselves, as is their wont, to the care 
of the young, countless thousands of them suddenly 
appeared, each carrying a cocoon much bigger than 
itself, which it was evidently anxious to deposit in 
some place out of the reach of danger, which, al- 
though they could not comprehend, they knew to 
be both formidable and imminent. Such a hurry 
skurry, such a running to and fro, such a getting 
up and down-stairs, as the song says, such a com- 
motion could scarcely have been known even at 
Brussels on the memorable night of the ball on the 
eve of the great battle of Waterloo, when it was 
suddenly announced to the officers of the allied 
armies that the French were advancing upon the 
city. 



252 A GREAT AND 

When throng'd the citizens with terror dumb, 
Or whispering with white lips, " The foe — -they come ! 
they come!" 

We all looked on with interested curiosity, and 
one of my companions having finished his first 
cigar, drew a box of lucifers from his pocket, and 
leisurely proceeded to light a second. This done,, 
he carelessly threw the burning match upon the 
ant-hill. It was an act as cruel as it would have 
been in Lemuel Gulliver had that mountainous 
traveller wilfully set fire to the city of Lilliput. 
The formicans were- for an instant confused, and 
appeared to know not what to do. But their per- 
plexity was of short duration. In less than half a 
minute scores and hundreds of ants rushed upon 
the blazing beam — for such it must have appeared 
in their eyes — and exerting their strength simul- 
taneously upon it, endeavoured to thrust it from 
their city. Many of them were burned to death in 
the gallant endeavour, but the survivors, nothing 
daunted, pressed forward over their dead or writh- 
ing bodies, as if conscious that there was no safety 
for those who still lived as long as the awful com- 
bustible was permitted to blaze and crackle in the 
midst of them. I was apprehensive that the whole 
mound, built as it was of dry twigs, would take fire ; 
but the mists had lain upon the mountain and the 
valley, the air was moist, and the flame of the 



A MIGHTY CITY. 253 

match burnt upwards. Onwards rushed the reso- 
lute firemen, score upon score, hundred upon 
hundred, till at last they rolled the match over 
and over, and out of their precincts, charred and 
blackened, and incapable of further mischief. We 
all, more or less, mistrusted our eyes, and the 
youngest, most thoughtless, and therefore the most 
cruel, of our company, suggested that if there were 
intelligence and design on the "part of the ants in 
acting as we supposed they had done, there would 
be no harm in making a second experiment. No 
sooner said than done. Another match was ignited 
and thrown upon the heap, and again, precisely as 
on the first occasion, the ants rushed pell-mell upon 
the blazing intruder, to prevent a conflagration, 
which, had it taken firm hold, it would have been 
impossible for them to extinguish. Again, some 
of the foremost champions of the public safety lost 
their limbs, and many more of them their lives ; 
and again, by the mere force and pressure of num- 
bers acting with a common purpose, the match was 
extruded before much harm had been done. I 
opposed myself to a third renewal of the experi- 
ment, and succeeded in persuading my companions, 
although not without difficulty, that enough had 
been done for curiosity and natural history ; that 
the truly merciful man was as merciful to the 
smallest as to the largest of God's creatures; and 



254 A GREAT AND 

that we had no right; in the mere wantonness of 
scientific observation, to take away the life which 
it was impossible for ns to bestow. 

It struck me at the time, that supposing an ant 
had a mind, as no doubt it has of some sort or de- 
gree, what idea it would form to itself of this awful 
visitation, being as it was in total ignorance of 
man's presence and agency in the matter ? We 
cannot easily put ourselves into the minds of our 
human fellow- creatures, of different ages, ranks, 
countries, modes of life, and degrees of education. 
To do so effectually and dramatically is one of the 
highest efforts of literary genius, yet we may by a 
little stretch of imagination, figure to ourselves an ant 
reasoning upon the things of his little world (great 
to him however) as an ant might be supposed to 
reason, and saying to its fellows, if it were a 
preacher or a philosopher, or a leading statesman 
among them: "We ants are wonderful creatures. 
We are in point of fact the most civilized and in- 
dustrious people in the world. The flies, for 
instance, do no work. They are a very inferior 
race ; they build no cities, they are mere savages. 
Besides, they possess no government. Around us 
we see no such intelligent creatures as ourselves. 
The world was made for us, and for us it produces 
aphides, honey-dew, and succulent fruits. Occa- 
sionally we are afflicted with visitations of Nature 



A MIGHTY CITY. 255 

which, create much havoc in our community, the 
causes of which we are as yet too ignorant to dis- 
cover. Our cities are overthrown and levelled to 
the earth by convulsions for which we cannot 
account ; and the fire from heaven sometimes 
descends upon us, as it did even now. But we 
are not unduly cast down in calamities such as 
these, and endeavour even on the worst occasions 
to keep up a brave spirit, and help ourselves as 
well as we can. Anyhow, imperfect as we may be, 
we have no superiors or even equals ! " 

Vain little creature ! yet not altogether without 
a justification for its vanity. When man talks in 
the same strain — as he often does — though more 
often he does not express himself with all the 
humility which I have supposed in this formican, is 
he also not a vain little creature ? I think he is ; 
and many philosophers, past and present, have been 
of the same opinion. 




1. 


ip 



THE ALPHABET OF THE LOWER 
CREATION. 

T is remarkable that no modern language 
has a better name for the collective let- 
ters that enter into the composition of 
all its words than alphabet, which is an 
abbreviation of " Alpha, Beta/' or the letters A, B, 
C, which is the familiar English and French ex- 
pression, sometimes used instead of the Greek 
word. Some of the Celtic nations whose primitive 
languages are unfortunately perishing, call the 
alphabet the "tree of life," a poetical and by no 
means inaccurate description of what might per- 
haps have been still better called "the tree of 
knowledge." The Scottish Highlanders call the 
Gaelic alphabet u Bithluiseanean," or the "life of 
plants," a notion derived from the fact, that the 
name of every letter without exception is also the 
name of a tree, plant, or shrub. It is impossible to 
ascertain during what countless ages mankind were 



TEE LOWER CREATION. 257 

possessed of speech, without being possessed of an 
alphabet and the art of writing. The invention of 
that art was unquestionably the greatest step ever 
taken by the race in the onward march of civiliza- 
tion; and has been the source from which all 
the greatest improvements, and all the noblest 
triumphs of humanity have sprung. 

That these may be language, without letters, is 
evident, with or without the experience of bar- 
barous races. Some of the guttural and other 
sounds that are employed by these primitive tribes, 
are not to be easily, if at all represented by any 
of the alphabetical signs in use among civilized 
communities, for the human voice has a far greater 
number of tones and inflexions, including the gut- 
turals, than symbols have ever been invented to 
represent. The English has nominally six vowels, 
"a," " e/ J "i" '%" "u," "J," but by means of 
diphthongs and triphthongs, or the combination of 
two or three of these with each other, as many as 
nineteen different vowel sounds in use in the Eng- 
lish language can be exhibited in writing. (C A" 
has at least four sounds, as in fat, fate, far, law. 
" E " has three, as in eke, set, err. ' ' I " has three, 
as in bite, bit, irreligious. " " has six, as in our, 
hot, nation, moon, joy, low. "TJ" has four, as in 
urgent, muff, refuse, dubious. The consonants in 
a similar manner express by their combinations, a 



258 ALPHABET OF TEE 

great variety of sounds which in a perfect language, 
with a perfect alphabet, if such were possible, would 
each require its own symbol; such as "fr," " gl" 
"ch," "bl," "br," and many others which will at 
once suggest themselves to every reader. 

But man is not the only animal that has the 
power of uttering the alphabetical sounds of vowels 
and consonants, though he is the only one that pos- 
sesses the art of writing them. There is, so far as 
is known, no bird or quadruped that does not in its 
pleasure, or its pain, its satisfaction, or its terror, 
emit some vowel sound, sometimes in combination 
with a consonant, and sometimes alone. The dog 
has the guttural iC ough," and three consonants, the 
"b," the "f," and the "w," and one vowel, " ow;" 
as in its well-known exclamation, "bow-wow," 
" wough," and the angry barks of " wowff" and 
"wuff." The bovine species have but one con- 
sonant and two vowels, as in "mu" and "ma." The 
full-grown sheep has two consonants and one vowel, 
as in "baa," and "maa;" while the lamb has "may" 
and " bay." The cat has two consonants and three 
vowels, as in " miau " and " purr ;" while many 
animals emit guttural and other sounds, which 
strike upon the human tympanum so imperfectly 
and so confusedly as to be scarcely representable in 
writing. The horse has evidently one consonant at 
the command of his voice, which is " n," and several 



LOWER CREATION. 259 

vowels and gutturals that glide very unmelodiously 
into one another when he neighs, whinnies, or 
snorts. Swift , in the only repulsive story in the 
travels of Gulliver, represents the neighing of the 
horse by the rugged and unpronounceable word 
( ' honyhnhnm." In nearly all the languages of 
Europe, in the attempt at literal rendering of the 
horse's utterance the letter " n " is employed. The 
French translate it by " hennir," the Italians by 
(( nitrire," the Germans by " wiechern," the Spanish 
by "rinchar," and the Dutch by " runniken " and 
(l gennishen." The pig has the thick guttural 
sound of <c gr " combined with m and f, from 
whence we derive the descriptive words l ' grumph " 
and " grunt." The roar of the lion is an intensi- 
fication of the " mu " of the bull, with a mingling 
of the r. Smaller animals, such as the squirrel, the 
rat, and the mouse, employ the vowel "q." with 
two indistinct consonants, which the English lan- 
guage imitates in the words " week " and ' c squeak." 
The alphabet of quadrupeds is thus very limited, 
being confined to the labial consonants, (i b," " f," 
' ' m," and "w," and the dental consonant " n," pe- 
culiar to the horse. The vowels at their command 
are "a," " aa," or "ah," " o» "oh," "oo," or 
"u," " ee," and the gutturals "ough" or "ugh." 
No sound of "i" appears, unless it be in the indis- 
tinct whinnyings of the horse or ass. 



260 ALPHABET OF THE 

The alphabet of the birds is greatly more copious, 
both in consonants and vowels. In fact, there is no 
vowel sound — whether single, double, or treble, 
utterable by the human larynx, that is not utter- 
able, and uttered by some member of the feathered 
tribes. Although the consonants of the birds do not 
include the two great consonants of the quadrupeds, 
the "b " and the "m" for the all-sufficient reason 
that these letters are labials, and birds have no lips, 
they comprise many others which quadrupeds do 
not possess; namely, the " c" " g" or "k;" the "&," 
the "p," the "t," and the ""z." Neither quadrupeds 
nor birds (with the sole exception of the parrot 
and such birds as may be taught to imitate more 
or less perfectly the human voice) possess the 
sounds of ie \" cc y" and " x;" unless the skylark pos- 
sesses " I" in its song, that resembles, as the French 
express it, the syllables tire-lire, or as we should 
represent it in English, teera-leera. Taking* these 
consonants with their accompanying vowels in the 
order which they assume in the English alphabet, we 
come first to " c" hard, the same as " k," and almost 
the same as " g." The rooks and crows pronounce 
very distinctly " caw, caw ;" the cuckoo pronounces 
" coo ! coo ! " whence its name ; the dove says 
croo, or curroo, whence the verb croodle, to utter 
sounds of endearment or interjections like a bird 
or a child, and the Scottish phrase, a " croodlin 



LOWER CREATION. 261 

doo," applied to a tender or affectionate infant. 
The consonant " d '■' seems to find its only representa- 
tion in the " cock-a-doodle-doo/" of onr old friend 
the male of the barn-door fowl, though it may be 
doubted whether this gallant and beautiful bird 
pronounces the " d," and whether his note of joy or 
defiance may not be accurately rendered, without 
any consonants, as och ! a ! oo ! a ! 00-00 ! As re- 
gards the Australian bird, which is supposed to 
cry " more pork," as plainly as the cuckoo cries 
coo-coo, it is quite impossible that the beak of a 
bird can emit the labial letter u m," for the satisfac- 
tory and single reason, that cc m " can only be pro- 
nounced by creatures that possess lips. The words 
more pork ! which give name to the bird in 
question, is doubtless an effort of the imagination 
on the part of the listeners, having no other foun- 
dation on which to rest than i( ohr-ork," or perhaps 
" ohr-awk." The next consonant used by the birds 
is f 'p/' which breaks out constantly in the song 
of the smaller birds of the finch species, and many 
others, more especially the curlew, with its mono- 
tonous cry of pee-wheep ! Next in order is ec t," 
with the chaffinch in the front of those who employ 
it, calling out continually " tu-eet," or u tweet;" 
and the owl, with its u to-wheet, to-whoo ! " The 
American bird which is represented as crying 
" whip poor will," may be cited for the use of the 



262 ALPHABET OF THE 

a w •" though its real no to, unassisted by the imagi- 
nation or the tradition of the listeners is more like 
" ippoo ! ee ! " than the strange request that is put 
into its beak by the fancy of mankind. The night- 
ingale alone among the feathered race possesses 
the power of enunciating the hard sound of " z" 
and will frequently repeat zu ! zu ! zu ! dozens of 
times before it changes the note of its song into 
any other of the consonants and vowels, of which it 
has a greater store at its command than any but the 
parrot and the imitative birds. 

With the exception of the combined consonants 
cl gy" as used by the raven, the dove, and the frog, 
neither quadrupeds, nor birds, nor such reptiles as 
may be included in the frog species, are able to 
enunciate sounds that require two initial consonants 
such as "br," "ft," " gl," "st," and others that are 
common in human speech. Their vowels and con- 
sonants are alike simple and easy of pronunciation. 
The gutturals, however, employed by birds and beasts 
are very numerous, and swine, frogs, turkeys, eagles 
and all the falconidse are more distinguished for 
the use of such sounds, than for softer and more 
euphonious utterances. The gobble of the turkey 
cock is almost as difficult to represent by written 
symbols as the neighing of the horse, and seems to 
,set the art of Cadmus at defiance. 

It will be noticed as regards quadrupeds, that 



LOWER QBE ATI OK 263 

the sounds — we might be justified in calling them 
words — which they severally express, are all in the 
nature of interjections. And it is possible that in 
the rudest ages of man upon the earth, interjections 
were, as much for the man as the brute, the only 
language in use. The interjections "oh!" "ah!" 
expressions of pain or wonder, or " good heavens ! " 
"dear me! " expressions of surprise, and many others 
which will at once occur to the reader's mind, 
as well as the objurgatory, minatory, and denuncia- 
tory words or phrases, which may all be classified 
under the one head of " cursing and swearing," 
and by which the feelings find a vent for themselves 
without a real language, are not, in point of fact, 
of a higher order of language than the interjec- 
tions of the dog, the horse, the bull, or the sheep. 
When the "swell" of our day ejaculates "by Jove!" 
on every occasion when other words fail him, which 
is very frequently, he stands, as regards language, 
on no higher level than the dog which says " bow- 
wow," or chanticleer, that salutes the morn with his 
" cock-a-doodle-doo ! " When a choleric or foolish 
person exclaims " d — n it ! " in season and out of 
season, he has no greater pretension to language 
than the ox that bellows " moo ! " and when a lady 
says, " oh la ! " or " dearie me !" to express her 
wonder or her pleasure, she places herself for the 
time being on the intellectual level of the owl or the 



264 ALPHABET OF THE 

cuckoo. Interjections, as used by men, as gram- 
marians have often described, are for the most part 
monosyllabic, and most frequently consist of a vowel 
followed by an aspirate, as oh ! ah ! but they some- 
times, like the bark of the dog, consist of dwo syl- 
lables, as oh dear ! oh la ! oh no ! and others ; and 
if men and women manage by such expressions as 
these to express their pain, their wonder, tteir plea- 
sure, or their anger, and to be readily understood 
by all who hear them, it may follow in the case of 
quadrupeds and birds, who use the same sort of 
speech, that they also can make themselves intelli- 
gible to their own species, and have, so far as the 
interjection goes, laid the foundation of a language. 
The singing birds, however, go far beyond the 
quadrupeds in this respect, and seem to have other 
parts of speech than the interjection. When the 
skylark breaks out into lyrical raptures, it needs no 
extraordinary effort of the poetical imagination to 
translate into words known to men, its joyous song 
hovering under a cloud and straight above his nest, 
true, as Wordsworth says, "to the kindred points of 
heaven and home." And to interpret the sounds 
that gush forth from its musical throat as phrases 
of joy and gratitude to the great Creator of the 
universe, 

We see it not, but we hear its voice 
Singing aloud, " Eejoice ! rejoice !" 



LOWER CREATION. 265 

The song of the nightingale, far richer both in 
vowels and consonants than that of the lark, has 
been the theme of poetry in all ages of the world, 
among such civilized nations as have furnished a 
climate which the beautiful bird frequents. Joy, 
sorrow, love, supplication, lamentation, adoration, 
ecstasy, all are expressed in the song of a nightin- 
gale, in full voice, on a balmy moonlight night, and 
to deny to such an utterance the inherent quality 
of ideas, merely because the words, for words they 
must be, are not intelligible except in the abstract 
to the listeners, is as unreasonable as it would be 
to deny for the same reason the poetry and the 
passion of a speech or a song in Italian, merely 
because the separate words of the great concrete 
discourse or hymn were unknown to the listeners. 





A SPECIMEN OF A NEW MYTHOLOGICAL 
DICTIONARY. 

VERY excellent friend of mine, who 
lives in London — bnt who delights to 
visit me in the country occasionally, 
and have a gossip on affairs in general 
— is one Doodoobhoy Rumsetjee, of Bombay, a 
Parsee and a philosopher, who has a way of looking 
at English things which gives a peculiar interest 
and piquancy to his ideas and expressions. The last 
time he visited me he made a little autobiographical 
statement of his youthful studies, and read me a very 
curious manuscript. 

ff In my youth/' he said, "I studied long and 
earnestly the mythology of the ancient peoples of 
India, and endeavoured to find a clue to the appa- 
rent confusion into which the old religions had been 
thrown by the lapse of time, and the ignorance or 
perversity of historians and commentators. At a 



MYTHOLOGICAL DICTIONARY. 267 

later period of my life I studied the equally in- 
teresting mythology of the Egyptians and Greeks, 
and the coarser and more vulgar forms of idolatry 
which took root among the Etruscans and Romans. 
Since I have been in England, I have been much 
struck with the similarity of the superstitions of the 
modern English with those of the ancient races, 
both of Europe and Asia, and have amused myself 
from time to time by setting down in my note-book 
the names of the gods and goddesses, the nymphs, 
satyrs, and demons, held in reverence by this great 
and powerful, but unhappily most heathen and ido- 
latrous people. I have also taken pains to ascertain 
the particulars from trustworthy sources, oral and 
historical, of the popular worship rendered to these 
gods at their several shrines, temples, and sanc- 
tuaries; and also of the local or general festivals 
occurring during the year in their honour in various 
parts of the country. A diligent study of men and 
manners has enabled me to bring many curious 
facts together in elucidation of this subject. As 
amid all the superstition and idolatry of the ancient 
Greeks there was a worship of the Supreme God, 
which such philosophers as Solon, Lycurgus, Pytha- 
goras, Plato, Socrates, and others, endeavoured to 
inculcate among the ignorant and benighted people, 
so in this country of Britain there seems to be a 
vague idea prevalent, both among the upper and 



268 A NEW MYTHOLOGICAL 

lower classes,, of a purer form of religion than the 
popular mythology would seem to indicate. But as 
I have not yet devoted much of my time to the 
study of the faith taught in the inner circle by the 
high priests and learned men of the realm, I leave 
that part of the subject for the present, and merely 
write down a few of the names of the gods and 
demigods,, or deifications of natural forces, which 
are worshipped in various parts of the British isles. 
You will observe that, as amongst the ancients, 
there are among this modern people many benefi- 
cent and many maleficent deities. The English have 
gods whose blessing they implore, and gods whose 
curse they deprecate. They have lucky and unlucky 
days ; auguries, omens, and sacred birds. They also 
have festivals duly appointed, on Avhich certain 
meats must be eaten, and certain drinks drunken, 
on pain of the displeasure of the divinities. I take 
the facts at random from my note-book, just as they 
have come under my observation ; and at some 
future time, if leisure and opportunity serve, and 
my materials accumulate upon my hands, shall ar- 
range them in alphabetical order, and upon some 
systematic plan, so as to present a complete dic- 
tionary of English mythology. This mythology, I 
venture to affirm, is as ridiculous in some respects, 
and as debasing in others, as those ancient myth- 
ologies which so many of the pretended wise men 



DICTIONARY. 269 

of Britain affect to hold in contempt for their ab- 
surdity and puerility. I do not hope to be entirely 
accurate in my information. You know well that no 
wild animal is so difficult to catch as a true and real 
fact. For a fact has a greasy tail, like the unclean 
pig that, at some of their rural Saturnalia in this 
land, the rustic populace are incited to catch ; and 
often when they think they have him fast by that 
particular part — the most prominent and manage- 
able portion of his body — he wriggles and shakes 
himself so vehemently, that the tail glides through 
their hands, leaving nought behind but some dirty 
tallow or soap upon their fingers. Happy for them 
if it be no worse than soap, unscented and un- 
poisoned. But the pig — or fact — is nowhere to be 
found. He has vanished utterly away into the empty 
air, and is of no more value than a leaf that grew 
and rotted in the first year of the life of Zoroaster. 
Yet I have striven to be correct, and if I am not 
entirely so in every instance, I feel that I am gene- 
rally as accurate as those German, French, and 
English writers upon mythology who have favoured 
the Western nations with their ideas upon the 
poetry, the arts, and the idolatry of Asia. 

" The Supreme God is worshipped by this people 
in a variety of temples, and with many different 
rites ; but as my present object is not to show the 
religion of the few, but the superstition of the many, 



270 A NEW MYTHOLOGICAL 

I sliall confine myself to the best enumeration I can 
make of the minor gods whom they hold in most 
esteem, and to whom they pay the most particular 
homage. Beginning with a benevolent and bene- 
ficent god, I find — 

" Respectability. 

" This deity is worshipped all over the country, 
and many sacrifices are daily and nightly offered up 
to him. His followers are exceedingly zealous in 
his cause, and I have heard — and have no reason to 
doubt the fact — that he' is worshipped with offerings 
of gigs and curricles. He is particularly the patron 
god of elegant town mansions and country villas. 
He presides over carriages, horses, and footmen. 
Dinner-parties and balls are under his especial care. 
There are certain parts in the large cities where no 
votary of this god will condescend to abide. The 
god has not sanctified them, and it is considered irre- 
ligious, and otherwise wrong and improper, to dwell 
in the unhallowed precincts. Bloomsbury and Rus- 
sell Squares, Gower Street, Harley Street, and other 
parts of London, are held to be obnoxious to this 
god, and are consequently avoided. His present 
most favoured temples are in the precincts called 
Belgravia and Tyburnia. All dukes, lords, bishops, 
and other titled persons belong, by right of birth or 
nomination, to this sect. Those not born into it 



DICTIONARY. 271 

may buy themselves into it by offerings of gigs and 
other sacred objects. The devotees of this god 
always worship him with clean linen, and consider it 
a sacrilegious act to eat their food with a steel fork. 
To these religionists a steel fork is as odious as lard 
is to a Hindoo. 

" Custom. 

"This god is one to whom stringent homage is 
paid. He is a tyrant who must be propitiated at 
any cost, and who rules with absolute sway over 
the interior of households and the general inter- 
course of society. To do or say anything not laid 
down in their code by the high-priests of this god 
is almost as bad, in a social point of view, as to 
break any one of the ten commandments of the true 
and Supreme God. 

" Fashion. 

"This is a female divinity, cruel as Moloch or 
Juggernaut, as frivolous as Zephyr, and as change- 
able as Proteus — to all of whom she bears some 
resemblance. Both sexes pay her homage, espe- 
cially the women, and expend large sums in offer- 
ings at her shrine. It was once a point of religious 
belief among her votaries that the waist of a woman 
should resemble that of a wasp, and that her heart 



272 A NEW MYTHOLOGICAL 

and lungs should be compressed till she could 
scarcely breathe. Perhaps many millions of maidens 
and matrons have heroically sacrificed their lives to 
this preposterous delusion. And yet these same 
people laugh at the Chinese ladies for the unnatural 
compression of their feet ! At other times it was 
decreed by the female priests of this divinity, who 
are called modistes and milliners — words of which I 
have not been able to ascertain the correct deriva- 
tion — that the fair devotees should wear powder in 
their hair, so as to imitate the grey locks of vene- 
rable age. On another occasion it was decreed that 
black patches should be worn on various parts of 
the face or neck ; at another, that it was irreligious 
to allow the feet or ankles to be seen — though a 
small foot and neat ankle are charms of which in 
this country the women may be justly proud. 

il It has lately been decreed by this imperious and 
imperial goddess, that living women shall wear upon 
their heads the hair of dead women, in addition to 
their own, to make it appear that Nature has been 
superabundantly bounteous to them in this the most 
graceful adornment of the sex; and this command 
they scrupulously obey, though neither man nor 
woman believes that any woman is, in this respect, 
any other than a cheat and impostor. A recent 
dogma of the faith was, that women should encase 
themselves in enormous hoops, and waddle about 



DICTIONARY. 273 

public places with garments as large, ungraceful, 
and unwieldy, as balloons, and which utterly destroy 
all grace and symmetry of person. 

" The oracles who utter their dark and mysterious 
sayings at several shrines — the most noted being 
at Paris — predicted that every week or fortnight, 
a woman, young or old, should be solemnly burnt to 
death in what was called her { crinoline ' (what the 
word means I do not know). The prediction was 
cruelly verified, and many victims of all ages duly 
perished. Sometimes the goddess orders the women 
to limp ; and once the edict has gone abroad, she 
who does not limp is no longer ranked among the 
faithful. Opposition to the fanatical observances 
of these bigots but increases their fervour. Eather 
than not obey what they believe to be the behests 
of this fiendlike but powerful goddess, they will 
sacrifice the happiness of their firesides, their hus- 
bands' fortunes, their own lives — everything that 
the world holds sacred. Sooner than be seen in a 
public place with garments such as their mothers 
wore, or one that a sculptor could imitate in 
marble, or a painter, without ridicule, paint upon 
canvas, these fair zealots would lay their heads upon 
the block, and wear, as they fondly imagine, the 
crown of martyrdom. To me, individually, this is 
one of the most distressing of all the forms of super- 
stition which I have observed in this country. 

T 



274 A NEW MYTHOLOGICAL 

" FlVE-PER-CENT. 

" This is considered to be a great and powerful 
god. He is worshipped principally by the male sex. 
It is said of this people that they wonld grind the 
bones of their fathers, and sell the dust for manure, 
to propitiate this divinity. No particular days are 
set apart for his worship ; he is to be adored at all 
times and in all places, and is held to be never 
absent from the thoughts of those who love him. 
He is worshipped with heart and hand, and all 
faculties of mind and body. The devotees of this 
god are no hypocrites : they thoroughly believe in 
his all-powerfulness, all-goodness, and all-sufficiency. 
They place him in the highest throne of their whole 
Olympus, and travel to the remotest ends of the 
earth, and into the wildest regions, in search of him 
or of his oracles. 

" Gosh, Jimminy, and Jingo. 

" These are three demigods whose peculiar func- 
tions or sanctity I have never been able to explain 
to myself in a satisfactory manner; but they are 
evidently favourites with the common sort of people, 
and their names are used to give force to an as- 
severation. If a man's word be doubted, he asserts its 
truth by ' Jingo/ by { Jimminy/ or by ' Gosh/ and 



DICTIONARY. 275 

it is strengthened to the extent of Jingo, Jimminy, 
or Gosh, and no further. 

" Bath, Jericho, and Blazes. 

' f These three places appear to be names of pits in 
the infernal regions, to which angry men are in the 
habit of consigning those who offend them. 

" Coventry. 

"Any one who commits a fault not punishable by 
the ordinary law and justice of the country is sent 
to this place, which is near the centre of the island 
— and no doubt selected for that reason — where he 
is kept in solitude and misery until his offence be 
purged. Many sensitive persons have been known 
to commit suicide rather than dwell there. 

" Brown, Jones, and Robinson. 

"I have been much puzzled to account for the 
existence of these personages, who are evidently 
mythological. I do not know whether they are of 
the female, or of the male sex ; but, to the best of my 
belief, they represent the Anglo-Saxon idea of the 
Three Graces. 

" Valentine. 

" This god, or demigod, is worshipped annually on 
the 14th of February. His votaries are principally 



276 A NEW MYTHOLOGICAL 

silly youths and girls, police constables, artizans and 
cooks. He seems to be in some degree the Cupid of 
this people. Homage is rendered to him by means 
of scraps of paper, with foolish rhymes and em- 
blematic designs or caricatures drawn or engraved 
upon them. Great license is allowed on this day, 
and every kind of absurdity is written or spoken. 
His principal shrine is a large temple called Great 
St. Martin's, in the City of London, which is an- 
nually encumbered with many millions of votive 
offerings, from which the State itself, and the Post- 
Master- General, or high-priest of St. Martin's, derive 
considerable advantage in the shape of revenue. 

" Kobin Hood. 

( ' This is a sylvan god, and partakes partially of the 
character of Pan and Diana, as well as of the Fauns 
and Satyrs. He is supposed to be attended by a 
beautiful wood-nymph, called Maid Marian. He 
haunts ancient trees ; and some oaks in a portion of 
Sherwood Forest, still remaining, and known to be 
at least three hundred years old, are believed to be 
his particular favourites. Many hymns and songs 
are made in his honour. 

" St. Monday, or Blue Monday. 
" This divinity is the especial god of artisans and 
labouring men. Festivals are held every Monday in 



DICTIONARY. 277 

his honour. His votaries religiously abstain from 
work on that day, and devote themselves to intem- 
perate drinking and various other forms of idleness, 
and what they call pleasure. Even although their 
wives and families be starving at home, and the 
day's wage would rescue them from misery, the 
god must be propitiated. ' Better offend your wife 
than the gods' is the maxim upon which the de- 
votees of Blue Monday are always willing to act. 

" St. Swithin. 

" This god presides over the weather and the at- 
mosphere. He is the patron of rain and storms. 
His festival is celebrated on the 15th of July. 

" Omens and Augukies. 

" It is impossible, within narrow limits, to detail 
sufficiently the numerous omens and auguries 
dreaded or believed by the people of this coun- 
try. There are no regularly appointed augurs or 
interpreters connected either with the State or 
the Church, but in every town and village there 
are to be found persons who pretend to look 
into futurity, mostly aged women — they may 
be called sibyls — who divine by palmistry or by 
the teacup. But some of these omens and au- 
guries are of such daily observance, and enter so 
largely into the life of the vulgar people, that even 



278 A NEW MYTHOLOGICAL 

in the most cursory and fragmentary notice of the 
subject they cannot be passed over. It is con- 
sidered lucky to meet a piebald horse, to find a 
horse-shoe, or inadvertently to put on the stocking- 
inside out. It is unlucky to spill the salt, or to be 
helped to it; to be one of thirteen at a dinner party; 
to set out on a voyage on a Friday ; to pass under a 
ladder ; to have two knives laid across one another 
at dinner ; and to meet a drove of swine, a funeral 
procession, or a person who squints. It is con- 
sidered unlucky not to eat plum-pudding and mince- 
pie at Christmas, or in the days intervening between 
that festival and the New Tear; equally unlucky 
not to eat goose at Michaelmas, pancakes on Shrove 
Tuesday, and salt fish on Good Friday. There are 
many more silly superstitions of this kind, but it 
will serve no particular purpose to narrate them at 
any greater length. 

" Sacred Animals. 

"Among the Egyptians, the cow, the ibis, and 
the scarabeus, were held sacred. In this country the 
only sacred animals of whose existence I have been 
able to inform myself are the hare, the grouse, the 
pheasant, the partridge, the woodcock, and the deer. 
These creatures are guarded from the profanation 
of plebeian and irreligious touch by very stringent 
laws. Any common man may kill a sheep or an ox, 



DICTIONARY. 279 

but the privilege of killing the peculiarly sacred 
animals above mentioned is reserved for the aristo- 
cracy. Particular days are appointed for the purpose 
of hunting or shooting them, before which time not 
even the greatest and proudest in the land may 
dare to slay them, though he should find them 
on his own grounds. I am not positive in affirming 
the stringency of this law as regards the deer, but 
the correctness of my statement in the case of the 
birds is not to be impugned. As the owl was to 
wisdom among the ancient Greeks, so the partridge 
and the grouse are to privilege among the moderns. 
There is another animal which partakes in some de- 
gree of the character of sanctity amongst the singu- 
lar Islanders, and that is the fox. He is generally 
worshipped on horseback, by men in red coats, with 
top-boots, though women have sometimes, but very 
rarely, been admitted to the mysteries. 

"Easter Monday. 

" You have read, of course, of the Saturnalia and 
Lupercalia of the Romans, and of the Dionysian, the 
Isthmian, and the Olympic games of the Greeks. 
The great religious festival of Easter Monday in 
England partakes largely of the characteristics of 
all these. It seems to be a popular welcome to the 
goddess of Spring, when the multitude shake off the 
torpor of the winter, and, renouncing their usual 



280 A NEW MYTHOLOGICAL 

pursuits, avocations, and trades, devote themselves 
to idleness, drunkenness, and jollity. The sacred 
grove where the rites are celebrated by the largest 
crowds and with the greatest earnestness is at a place 
called Greenwich, or Grinnidge. Here there is a 
celebrated Temple of the Sun, where the people 
love to congregate — doubtless from the fact that 
the festivity is purely zodiacal and astronomical in 
its origin. The high-priest of this temple is always 
called ' Airy/ — from aer, or air, the atmosphere — 
which, with the heavenly bodies that gyrate in its 
infinite profundities, he makes his especial study. 
From the peculiar sanctity of this place, the British 
people calculate the longitude from it. A second 
festival, called Whit- Monday, is celebrated in and 
around the same spot ; but it is not so important, or 
held in such high veneration, as the spring festival. 
The orgies of the Roman Saturnalia are equalled, if 
not exceeded, on these occasions ; and drunkenness 
and other forms of vice take, for twenty-four hours, 
undisturbed possession of the minds and bodies of 
both male and female. 

" John Barleycorn. 

" This hero, or demi-god, is held in great repute. 
Many marvellous stories are recorded of him. It is 
said that he was ground to death in a mill, and yet 
revived ; that his blood was drunk by his enemies, 



DICTIONARY. 281 

and drove them frantic ; that he was buried deep 
under the earth in the autumn, and rose again to 
life in the spring more vigorous than ever. He is 
principally worshipped in the great cities, where 
his most famous temples are built. He seems to 
be the Bacchus of this people, but is represented 
in drawings and statues more after the model of 
Silenus. The State takes his religion under its 
especial care, and derives, it is reported to me by 
men learned in statistics, no less than £5,000,000 
sterling from the tax annually paid by his disciples 
for liberty to worship him in their own way. Lately, 
however, two new sects have arisen, who oppose 
John Barleycorn as a false god. The members of 
the first call themselves Teetotalers, but I know not 
what the word means ; the other sect is under the 
leadership of a northern prophet called Forbes 
Mackenzie; but these faiths are not extensively 
popular." 





GROWTH OF A LONDON MYTH. 

Y friend Doodoobhoy Rumsetjee has his 
own notion, as will have been seen, on 
the subject of Mythology among the 
English, — notions possibly quite as well 
founded as those which the modern English, and all 
European nations entertain on the mythology of 
Greece and Rome. But what he read to me as spe- 
cimens of his dictionary set me thinking on the 
subject of " myths " generally, and how " myths " 
grew like seed, from small beginnings into lofty 
trees. And this brought to my recollection a veri- 
table London " myth," which came within the scope 
of my experience in the following manner. 

Once upon a time, ' ' when I was a little tiny boy," 
I was brought from the country to a lodging in Kirby 
Street, Hatton Garden. It was before the railway 
era, and I travelled by the mail coach, and had 
a seat with the guard, and the privilege of admiring 
his red coat and handling his bugle. At that period 



A LONDON MYTH. 283 

Kirby Street was not wholly unfashionable. There 
was then as now a very considerable population of 
Italians in the neighbouring courts and alleys, en- 
gaged in the manufacture of optical instruments, 
and of plaster images and casts ; but Hatton Garden, 
Ely Place, and Kirby Street, still contained private 
dwelling houses where native Londoners of a certain 
social position resided. It was in one of these that 
I dwelt for about two months, pet and favourite of 
the kindly and garrulous old lady who was mistress 
of the establishment. Of all the stories she told me, 
that of Lady Hatton fixed itself most firmly in my 
mind, partly because it was tragical and super- 
natural, but in a great degree because the very 
stones of the street seemed to prate of it, and 
Bleeding Heart Yard, a place with a ghastly name 
and a weird reputation, the scene of the final cata- 
strophe, was within a stone's throw of the room 
where I sat listening to the dreadful recital. It was 
a " myth," though at the time I had no idea of what 
a " myth " meant. It was to this effect : 

In the reign of Queen Elizabeth there stood in what 
is now Cross Street, Hatton Garden, the suburban 
mansion of Sir Christopher Hatton, who by the 
favour of his sovereign— -some people say because 
he was the most graceful dancer, and not because 
he was the ablest lawyer of his time — had been ad- 
vanced to the position of Lord Keeper. 



284 GROWTH OF A 

In this house., which was surrounded with plea- 
sant gardens, and appears to have stood in about 
the centre of a space bounded by Holborn on the 
south, by Saffron Hill and Baldwin's Gardens on the 
east, by Leather Lane on the west, and by Hatton 
Wall on the north, Sir Christopher was accustomed 
at all proper seasons to hold high revel and enter- 
tain the principal people of his day. 

When this eminent person was in his sunny 
youth, when he had neither acquired name nor fame 
nor royal favour, he was a constant attendant at the 
theatres of London. Oranges had been in the first 
year of Elizabeth newly introduced into Europe from 
China by the Portuguese, and had but recently found 
their way to England. Then, as now, a trade in the re- 
freshing fruit was carried on both at the doors and in 
the interior of the theatres. Among the girls who 
plied this industry was one very handsome person, 
very poor, but very proud, with beautiful long dark 
hair, and dark eyes, that could flash either with holy 
or unholy fire. The gallant Sir Christopher bought 
some oranges of her one day, and made her a pretty 
speech upon the happiness of the man, whoever he 
might be, who could hope to gain her affections. 
Thoughtless Sir Christopher ! From the moment 
that her eyes met those of the gay young gentleman 
the lovely orange-girl became the victim of one all- 
consuming desire. Sir Christopher bought many 



LONDON MYTH. 285 

oranges of her as, every day when he came to the 
theatre, she threw herself in his path to attract 
his notice. Every day he made her many little 
flattering speeches. After a time he became some- 
what annoyed to learn that the girFs attachment to 
him was so obvious as to have become a subject of 
banter among his friends. He was in no humour 
for an intrigue. But the colder he became the 
warmer she grew. When he retreated she pursued. 
When he was indifferent she was enthusiastic. 
When he froze she burned, and desperate thoughts 
took possession of her mind. It seemed to her as 
if she could neither live nor die, and that life with- 
out his love was infinitely worse than all the pangs 
of death. At this time, and long previously, the 
Tragical History of Dr. Faustus — a very doleful 
ballad — was commonly sung in the streets : 

The devil in fryar's weeds appeared to me, 
And straight to my request he did agree, 
That I might have all things at my desire, 
If I gave soul and body for his hire. 

She knew this woful piece of doggerel by heart. 
If Faustus could find a devil to buy his soul — for 
the price of love and a term of earthly felicity — 
could she not find a devil to do her the same good 
turn ? 0, that she could ! For many days and 
nights she called upon the Prince of Darkness, upon 
Satan, upon Lucifer, upon Mephistopheles, by every 



286 GROWTH OF A 

name that she thought powerful, to come to her 
assistance. There was no answer. At last, upon 
one cold and rainy night, when she was more than 
usually desperate and unhappy, she strayed towards 
the watermen's stairs at London Bridge, and was 
about to drown herself, when she became aware of 
a stranger, who was standing by her side. He was 
a young man in the bloom of beauty, and had very 
sparkling blue grey eyes of the colour of wood 
smoke, and a thick bushy beard and moustache of a 
hue between yellow and red, white regular teeth, a 
smile that was rather haughty and condescending 
than attractive or fascinating, and such beautiful 
white hands as might have belonged to a lady, and 
never could be supposed to have been employed in 
hard or dirty work. He was dressed in a suit of 
black velvet — all black from top to toe — with the 
exception of his hose and shoe ribbons and the 
jaunty feather in his cap, all of which were of 
scarlet. 

" So you think of jumping into the river/' he 
said, in a grave tone of voice ; ' ' but would not that 
be foolish as well as wicked ? " 

She started, though she did not in the least 
imagine who he could be. He looked kind, how- 
ever, and she simply replied, C( I am very mise- 
rable." 

(f But you are young and lovely, and you may 



LONDON MYTH. 287 

yet find happiness, and plenty of it, if you will only 
seek it in the right manner. I know your history. 
You love Sir Christopher Hatton. Yes, you love 
him, and he does not love you in return. A very 



common case ! 



I" 



"Mine is no common case," replied the dark- 
eyed girl, with startling emphasis, looking straight 
at her visitor. " If he cannot love me, I will die. 
Life without him is hourly misery." 

"And with him would be hourly bliss, of course. 
I know all that," continued the stranger, very coolly ^ 
if not sarcastically. " Listen to me ! I am a bliss 
merchant. I deal in the article. I have a great 
stock at my disposal." 

' ' Then give me some of it, for the love of Hea- 
ven," she said, clasping her hands, looking up in 
his face, and appearing even to his eyes to be ex- 
ceedingly beautiful. 

"Merchants don't give/' said he. "You, for in- 
stance, don't give away oranges. You sell them. 
Giving is not in my line, or I should soon be a 
bankrupt, rich as I am ; and if I were fool enough 
to be liberal, it would not be for love of the place 
you mention." 

Sell me joy, then ; sell me the love of Sir Chris- 
topher Hatton ; make him love me as I love him, 
and if the bliss can be but mine for seven days, you 
shall name your own price, even if it be my soul, 



288 GROWTH OF A 

provided you can get his also, and we can both go 
to perdition together ." 

" Fair and softly," said Lucifer, if it were indeed 
he, and who else could it be ? "I can only deal 
with one person at a time. You and I can do our 
business first. He and I, if possible, can do our 
business afterwards. In my little transactions with 
human kind, I have but one price — which is the 
soul. Will you sell me yours ?" 

" I will," she replied, with a slight shudder, " for 
his love; warm, passionate, undivided, for seven 
days." 

tc Stupid girl ! you must have a very bad opinion 
of me, to think I could entrap you into such a mise- 
rable bargain as that. No ! no ! I have some heart 
and conscience, though you may not believe it. 
What do you say to seven weeks ? " 

"Better, oh better!" 

" Seven months ? " 

" Bliss indescribable ! " 

u Seven years ? " 

" Oh, do not mock me ! If I had seven souls, 
I would sell them all to you, for such a price as 
that." 

There was not much talk between the two after 
this. Seven years was the term agreed upon, and 
the price was to be her immortal soul at the end 
thereof. The stranger produced a parchment, wrote 



LONDON MYTE. 289 

out the agreement in a very neat lawyer-like hand, 
read it over to her, and all was ready for her mark. 
This, as everybody knows, must in such transactions 
be made with blood. 

" You are not afraid of the prick of a needle ? " 
asked her companion, smiling ; and before she could 
reply, he took hold of her by her beautiful plump 
arm, squeezed a sharp diamond ring that was on his 
finger against it, and drew just one drop of red, 
ripe, rich blood. He produced a pen from his dou- 
blet, dipped the point in the liquid, placed it in her 
hand, and showed her where to place her mark. 
She did as she was requested. The stranger blew 
upon the mark to dry it — his breath was hot, no 
doubt — then folded up the document, and placed it 
carefully in his pocket. 

"Now," said he, "fair and noble lady — for I 
hereby create you a countess — let me see what title 
would suit you best ? The Countess di Sidonia San 
Felice ? That will do ! See you don't forget it ! 
You will want a great deal of money. ISTo thing is 
to be done without gold. I myself, though I do not 
value it, cannot manage my business without it. 
Were there no gold in the world, I verily believe 
there would be little work left for me. Take this 
ring, and whenever you want cash, however much 
or however little, rub it all round with the tip of 
your right forefinger, and you will find in your 

u 



290 GROWTH OF A 

purse, or at your feet, the exact sum you have 
thought of. Just try the experiment." 

She took the ring, rubbed it as directed, and said, 
"One hundred gold pieces." She felt a sudden 
weight in her pocket, and looked both alarmed and 



" Take them out and count them," said he. "If 
you had named a million it would have been just 
the same ; but as you would have found the mass 
rather heavy, I think you need not call for such a 
quantity, except on the great occasions when less will 
not suffice. And now, countess, you must act the 
part of a great lady — I know you can do it — and 
leave me to work for you in the proper quarter. I 
will perform my part of the contract like a gentle- 
man. My word is my bond. Having done so, I will 
not trouble you with my company uninvited, for the 
full term of seven years, at the expiry of which, 
whether you invite me or not, I shall come and 
pay my respects to you. It will be necessary, 
however, in the meanwhile, until I have made the 
man of your choice your own for seven years, 
which I truly hope may be happy and delicious 
years to you — on my honour as a gentleman I 
swear it — that you and I should sometimes be 
seen together. I am, remember it well, the Duke 
di Sidonia San Felice, and you are my niece. I 
shall introduce you into good society. If I am at 



LONDON MYTH. 291 

any time disagreeable to you, or if the thought of 
our little bargain causes you any annoyance, just 
give me a look — I am skilful in looks, and need no 
language to tell a person's thoughts — and I will re- 
lieve you of my presence. But don't, for your own 
sake, try to get rid of me in a pet or temper. And 
before I say farewell let me give you a word of 
advice. Don't make love to Sir Christopher. Don't 
run after him. Don't let him know that you care a 
straw for him. Let him be the wooer. Let him sigh 
his soul away at your feet - } and if you have a little 
scorn to bestow upon him, not too much, mind you, 
just a little judicious tiny bit*of scorn, dart it at him 
from those lovely black eyes of yours, and he will 
come to you as slavishly and affectionately as if he 
were your lapdog. I am an old stager in these mat- 
ters, and have been in love myself — a long, long- 
time ago. Farewell, sweet countess ! " 

The next time that Sir Christopher went to the 
theatre there was no orange girl to offer him or any 
one else oranges, at which, to say truth, he was 
rather pleased than otherwise, for the orange girl, 
in consequence of the jests of his friends had be- 
come a bore. He met, at the entrance, his friends, 
the Earls of Southampton and Pembroke, both great 
patrons of the drama. They asked him if he had 
seen the new Spanish beauty, who, for the last two 
days, had dazzled the eyes of all beholders. She 



292 GROWTH OF A 

had suddenly appeared in London, no one exactly 
knew from whence, and was accompanied by her 
uncle, a Spanish grandee and magnifico of the high- 
est class, a grave old gentleman, with a highly in- 
tellectual face, who dressed in black velvet, with red 
hose, and shoe ribbons, wore a red plume in his cap, 
and a cross of diamonds upon his breast worth mil- 
lions of money. Sir Christopher had neither seen 
nor heard ; but, entering the theatre, the lady and 
her uncle were pointed out to him. Such glorious 
beauty in a woman, such calm dignity and serene 
wisdom in a man, he thought his eyes had never 
before beheld. Long before the performances were 
over, he had asked Lord Southampton to introduce 
him personally to the duke, who had, as he was 
told, brought letters of introduction both to him 
and Lord Pembroke. The fair countess was an apt 
scholar, and before three weeks had passed, she had 
half of the iC golden youth " of London at her feet, 
attracted quite as much by her reputed wealth as by 
her undoubted beauty. And she possessed not only 
these two great magnets for attracting and fixing 
men's admiration, but a ready wit, and could hold 
her own worthily against all the beaux-esprits and 
amiable cynics of the time. The duke, on his part, 
favoured Sir Christopher greatly, took pleasure in 
his society, entertained him with his learning, and 
charmed him with his conversation, for the duke 



LONDON MYTH. 293 

had seen so much of the world, and was such a deli- 
cately flavoured cynic., that it was impossible for 
any one to be long in his society without recog- 
nising in him a very remarkable as well as a very 
charming person. Encouraged by the countenance 
of this high personage, and daily more and more 
smitten with the charms of the countess, who gave 
him, however, but very slight encouragement, while 
she threw her brightest smiles and most winning 
glances at some one or other of his many rivals, Sir 
Christopher became, what the countess had become 
when an orange girl, head over ears in love. He 
finally took courage to offer heart and hand, name 
and fortune, to his brilliant enslaver, and, to his 
great distress, though scarcely to his surprise — ■ 
considering from how many suitors, young, hand- 
some, noble, and rich, she might choose — was sum- 
marily rejected. 

"I will not be married for money," said the 
countess, " but for myself alone. Could you love me 
if I were poor ? If, for instance, I earned my daily 
bread by selling oranges at the doors of the theatre ? 3 * 

" I could," said Sir Christopher, not without some 
surprise at the mention of oranges — [and he put a 
question to himself without words, " Had she, too, 
heard that silly gossip about the orange-girl, and 
was she jealous ? "] — " and only wish that you were 
a peasant girl, with no other dowry than you:? 



294 GROWTH OF A 

loveliness and your angelic sweetness of disposition, 
that I might make yon the offer I make now, and 
prove to you how dearly and how truly I love you." 

The countess looked incredulous, though she was 
beginning to feel very happy ; but having, from the 
company she had lately kept, learned to add the 
cunning of the serpent to the gentleness of the 
dove, and thinking, moreover, that Sir Christopher 
was fast coming into the right road in which she 
wished him to travel, she dallied with him yet a 
little. 

"I am too young to marry," she said. "I do 
not know whether I shall marry at all. If I do, I 
am not sure whether I should like to marry an 
Englishman. In any case, I cannot marry without 
my uncle's consent, and I think he objects to Eng- 
lishmen." 

Sir Christopher, as may be supposed, did not lose 
heart. Seeking an interview with the duke, who 
seemed to take an almost paternal interest in his 
fortunes, he ascertained that so far from having any 
dislike to Englishmen, or Englishwomen, this great 
magnifico esteemed them both very highly, espe- 
cially the ladies ; and next to being a Spanish gran- 
dee, he thought it the finest thing" in the world 
to be an English nobleman. He also ascertained — 
or, rather, hoped he had ascertained — that the saucy 
countess was not nearly so indifferent to himself as 



LONDON MYTH. 295 

she pretended, and that there was no one among- 
her many suitors upon whom she looked with greater, 
if with so much favour. 

( ' When I was your age/'' said the duke, c ' I was 
Lever very satisfied to take no for an answer in 
matters of the heart, unless I discovered that the 
superior attractions of a rival had not left me a 
chance. In the latter case I summoned philosophy 
to my aid, and cooled myself with it as speedily as I 
might. It seems to me, signor, that you do not 
require any cooling' at present, and that, on the 
contrary, a little more heat might possibly be ad- 
vantageous. My fair niece is, as you may have 
observed, a proud woman, and the prouder a woman 
is the more ardently she loves, if she loves at all. 
That, at least, is my experience. As for proud wo- 
men, they are my special favourites. I love them 
dearly ; for of such is my kingdom." 

The duke and the countess managed so well, and 
Sir Christopher became so importunate a wooer, that 
the marriage was agreed upon, and for a wonder, 
Queen Elizabeth did not object to it. Higher powers 
than the majesty of England were at work, and the 
marriage, though not made in Heaven, was made in 
a place where a great deal of passionate work is 
done. It was celebrated with much pomp and fes- 
tivity, though it was remarked as unfortunate that 
the good Duke of Sidonia San Felice was taken very 



296 GROWTH OF A 

suddenly ill on the night preceding the ceremony, 
and could not attend in church to give away the 
bride. Sir Christopher considerately and respect- 
fully hinted that the marriage might be delayed for 
a day or two to permit of the duke's presence. 
" No, no ! " said the duke, " that would be unlucky. 
Even were I at the point of death, which I am not 
— though sometimes in my sad moments I feel that 
I should like to die — I would not consent to be suck 
a mar-joy as that, and to stand between two loving 
hearts, with my miserable ailments. Go, my son, 
and get married, and may joy go with you." Tlie 
duke recovered next day so suddenly, and looked so 
remarkably well, that ill-natured people (people 
always are ill natured) began to think it strange, 
and to recall the fact that no one had ever seen him 
at church or chapel since he came to England. He 
was not a religious man evidently. 

Tradition, if her voice were truly represented by 
the good old dame from whom I gathered this story, 
has not recorded whether in this instance the course 
of true love ran smooth, and whether they were 
happy ; but that they lived together, to all outward 
appearance, as man and wife should, decently and 
honourably, according to their station, seems ob- 
vious, from the fact that Sir Christopher, seven years 
after the nuptials, gave a splendid ball, of which his 
wife did the honours, and at which all the notabili- 



LONDON MYTH. 297 

ties of London were present. Lady Hatton had for 
the last year been in very indifferent health. She 
seemed unhappy, but her lord could never under- 
stand exactly what was the matter ; and though she 
was attended by the most eminent physicians of the 
day, the only explanation they could give of her 
malady was that it was mental, and that she was 
suffering from some secret sorrow, which she seemed 
disinclined to divulge. Her uncle had disappeared 
from England very shortly after her marriage, and ex- 
plained to Sir Christopher, as a reason for not keep- 
ing up a correspondence with him, that he had made 
up his mind to see the world, to travel to the re- 
motest ends of the earth in search of adventures. 
" In fact," he said, in a jocose humour, " I am like 
a roaring lion, I like to go about the earth seeking 
whom I may devour. I speak metaphorically, of 
course, and mean what I may devour in the shape of 
new excitement, and fresh experience of men and 
their ways." He promised, however, to leave Lady 
Hatton a clue to his whereabouts, in case he should 
ever be wanted. But he never was wanted. Sir 
Christopher mentioned him but rarely, and noticed 
particularly whenever he did so that Lady Hatton 
seemed uneasy, as if she would be glad to banish 
his remembrance from her mind. Sir Christopher, 
after an ineffectual attempt to discover whether 
there had been a quarrel between them, forbore to 



298 GROWTH OF A 

speak upon the subject after the first two years of 
their marriage, and had almost forgotten that such 
a person as the Duke of Sidonia San Felice had ever 
existed. For the month preceding the great ball 
Lady Hatton had seemed more than usually un- 
happy. She could not bear to be left alone even for 
an instant, and would often break out into hysterical 
sobs, followed by hysterical laughter distressing to 
witness. 

"Do you think," she said one evening to Sir 
Christopher, as they sat in the library, after a day 
in which some portion of her old happiness seemed 
to have revisited her, "that there is any truth in 
the story of Dr. Faustus, who sold himself to Lucifer 
for worldly power and dominion ? " 

"A stupid old legend," said the practical Sir 
Christopher — " an absurd superstition. No doubt 
people do give their souls to the devil, when they 
commit sin, persist in sin, and die unrepenting." 

"Repentance makes a difference, then?" said 
the lady. "And suppose I sold my soul to Lucifer, 
for love of you, and were to repent that I did so, 
could Lucifer claim my soul ? " 

Sir Christopher smiled. "My dear good wife," 
said he, "you are certainly unwell. Your health is 
injured because you have been left too much alone 
lately. I shall give half-a-dozen grand dinners and 
balls, and invite a large company each time. We 



LONDON MYTH. 299 

shall be merry, and you shall be the very queen of 
all the joy and festivity. Cheer up, love. You have 
youth, beauty, riches, friends, and your husband's 
heart. What more do you require ? " 

" Peace of mind ! " she replied with a shudder, as 
some painful thought flashed upon her brain, and 
lighted up her dark eyes with a tragic light. " I 
have sold myself to Lucifer, or I have dreamt so." 

" But it is silly — pardon the expression — to lose 
your peace of mind for a dream." 

' c My dream was a reality, or so like a reality 
that I cannot tell the difference." 

"Many dreams are. I have had such dreams 
myself, especially when I have been out of health. 
We shall cure all that for you if you will trust to my 
care and attention." And Sir Christopher gave her 
as warm an embrace as if they had only been mar- 
ried seven days, instead of close upon seven years, 
and the lady for awhile was comforted. 

The great ball at last took place, and it seemed 
to all present that never had Lady Hatton looked so 
exceedingly beautiful; that her dark full eyes had 
never gleamed with such vivid lightning glances 
upon her hosts of flatterers and admirers, and that 
her pretty little feet had never twinkled so elegantly, 
so joyously, and so deftly in the dance. Sir Chris- 
topher was delighted, and convinced, moreover, that, 
after all, her only ailments were the results of the 



300 GROWTH OF A 

too great solitude, in which his increasing avoca- 
tions had compelled him to leave her — a solitude 
which he firmly resolved should not continue, if 
wealth could bring amusement, or change of scene, 
or any possible recreation that might divert her 
mind and occupy her best faculties. It was five 
minutes before midnight by the great hall clock, 
when a new and important visitor was announced — 
no less a person than the long-lost Duke di Sidonia 
San Felice, in the well-known and graceful costume in 
which he was so familiar to Sir Christopher, the suit 
of black velvet, the scarlet hose and shoe ribbons, 
and the jaunty scarlet plume in his cap. Lady Hat- 
ton turned red, then ghastly pale, at the sight, and 
it was thought by those close to her that she would 
drop to the ground. But she braced up her nerves 
as the duke approached her, and took her by the 
hand. He smiled with a grave sweet smile, and said 
softly, yet in a voice that all around could distinctly 
hear : "lam punctual/'' Then turning to Sir Chris- 
topher, he said : " You did not expect me. Of course 
not ! Do not disturb the dance. How lovely your 
wife looks ! She has been a good wife to you, I am 
sure." Sir Christopher put his hand upon his heart. 
" I knew she would be," continued the duke. " Such 
women as she are rare in this wicked world. I have 
a little bit of family news to communicate to her. 
We can sit together for a few minutes, can we not, 



LONDON MYTH. 301 

in the ante-room yonder among the flowers ? What 
lovely flowers you have got, Sir Christopher. My 
taste exactly." He had taken Lady Hatton by the 
hand, and he led her with the utmost respect and 
gallantry from amid the crowd. The dance went on, 
but Lady Hatton never re-appeared ; neither did the 
Duke di Sidonia San Felice. After the lapse of an 
hour, Sir Christopher, not knowing what had be- 
come of her, and ardently desiring not to make a 
scene or a scandal, informed his guests that my lady 
had been taken unwell, but not seriously, and had 
gone to bed. The dance went on; every one was 
joyous except poor Sir Christopher, who was glad 
when the last of the guests had departed, and he 
was left alone to ponder over the very singular dis- 
appearance of his lady, and to wonder when she 
would return to him. 

In the morning a very horrible sight presented 
itself in the yard of Hatton Garden. The great 
pump that stood in the middle was all stained and 
beclotted with blood and brains, as if some one's 
head had been dashed and broken against it. On 
the ground lay a human heart in a pool of blood, 
and round about were shreds and tatters of female 
attire, and fragments of gold chains and loose dia- 
monds and other jewels such as had been worn by 
Lady Hatton on the previous evening. There were 
no traces of a body, but there was a deep hole in 



302 GROWTH OF A 

the ground as if it had been made by a thousand 
thunderbolts, and the whole place smelt sulphurous 
and mephitic. Lucifer had claimed his own. Thus 
had ended the bright career of the beautiful but 
wicked Lady Hatton. " And, to this day," added 
the good old lady who told me the legend, " ' Bleed- 
ing-heart Yard ; stands close by to prove the story 
true." 

It was clearly a case — though it was not till 
many years afterwards that I was wise enough to 
understand it — like that of Tenterden Steeple and 
the Goodwin Sands. The story had not made 
Bleeding Heart-yard, but Bleeding Heart-yard had 
made the story. The name impressed the popular 
imagination, and the popular imagination evolved 
and produced the legend that was to account for it. 
And what, asks the practical reader who does not 
believe in ghosts or devils (though he may, perhaps, 
have some degree of faith in Mr. Home the medium) , 
is the true origin of cc Bleeding Heart-yard ? 3> Two 
explanations are presentable, either of which may 
be the correct one. The first is that the ancient 
names of the wall-flower — that sweet-smelling orna- 
ment of the garden — that in the Language of 
Flowers is emblematic of "poverty," were the 
' ' Blood-wort " and the ' e Bleeding Heart,'' and that 
one of the yards of Sir Christopher Hatton' s resi- 
dence having been overgrown with it, acquired in 






LONDON MYTH. 303 

early times a name to which later superstition, 
interpreting too literally, gave a ghastly interpreta- 
tion. The second is that, in the days before the 
Reformation, there stood at a corner of the Hatton- 
garden domain an inn or hostelry known as " The 
Bleeding Heart," and that the courtyard of the 
aforesaid hostelry, when it had ceased to be a 
hostelry, retained its ancient name among a new 
generation. "The sign of the Bleeding Heart," 
say Messrs. Larwood and Hotten, in their interest- 
ing History of Signboards, " was the emblematical 
representation of the five sorrowful mysteries of the 
Rosary, viz., the heart of the Holy Virgin pierced 
with five swords." 

Thus do myths grow ; and thus, perhaps, from as 
small beginnings, combined with the love of the 
mystic and the supernatural, that seems inherent in 
human nature, have sprung up nine-tenths of the 
legends of Greece and Rome, and of all the great 
nations of antiquity. 





NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD SUBJECT. 




ANDERING alone on the border of 
Kent and Sussex, I came into the 
vicinage of the garden where the 
traditional Jack Cade was killed, and 
began to think on his remarkable and little under- 
stood history. Justice has not been done to this 
unfortunate reformer : a man with a great name, a 
great cause, a great purpose, and a great following. 
His real name was said to be John Cade. His 
assumed name was John Mortimer. He claimed to 
be a son of the royal House of Plantagenet, and 
first cousin to Richard Duke of York — he of the 
White Rose — whose quarrel with the Red Rose 
kept England in a turmoil, and let loose the hounds 
of civil war for more than a quarter of a century. 
This personage, a great reformer in his day — popu- 
larly known as the Captain of Kent — and " John 
Amend- All/' has received but sorry treatment at the 
hands of history, while at the hands of poetry, as 



AN OLD SUBJECT. 305 

represented by Shakespeare, or whosoever was the 
real author of the then national play of Henry the 
Sixth, of which Shakespeare was the reviser and 
adapter, he has received very great injustice. Had 
he been left to history alone, no more harm would 
have been done to his memory than such as is 
usually inflicted upon those who are guilty of the 
political crime of unsuccess ; but poetry, unluckily 
for " the Captain's u fame, has warped history aside, 
and presented us with a caricature instead of a true 
picture. Let us endeavour, by the light of dis- 
coveries recently made, to show Cade as he was, 
and not as Shakespeare has depicted him. 

The earnest political reformers, or rebels as it 
was the fashion to call them, who arose in the early 
days of English history to do battle against oppres- 
sion, never received fair treatment at the hands of 
historians. Having no printing-press, by means of 
which to detail and discuss their grievances, and no 
means of organizing public opinion to operate upon 
the minds of men in power, there were no means 
open to them for the remedy of intolerable abuses 
but the rough and unsatisfactory arbitrament of 
physical force. Those early reformers knew the 
risks they ran. If they would speedily achieve 
their ends, and kings were obstinate in denying 
them justice, they had no resource but rebellion. 
If they succeeded, which they did sometimes, ;t was 

x 



306 NEW LIGHT ON 

well. If they failed, and were so unhappy as not 
to die on the battle-field, they suffered the rebel's 
doom, and left their name and fame to posterity, 
which did not always care to remember them. 

Among the most notable of these English 
cc rebels/' who would be called reformers if they 
lived in our day, was John Cade. In the second 
part of King Henry the Sixth, he is represented as 
an illiterate and brutal ruffian, sprung from the very 
dregs of the populace, with the manners of an 
American " rowdy," or of that equally detestable 
product of our own modern civilization, the Eng- 
lish " rough." The author of Henry the Sixth in- 
variably speaks of him under the familiar and 
contemptuous epithet of " Jack," and though he 
adheres with more or less exactitude to the truth 
of history as regards the leading facts of his career, 
he wholly misrepresents his character and objects ; 
and is about as unfair as a dramatist of our day 
would be if he introduced George Washington to 
the stage in the character of a clown or a Sheffield 
trades-unionist. 

In the year 1450, when Cade made his appearance 
as a reformer of abuses, very great discontent pre- 
vailed among the commons. This, however, was 
by no means an abnormal state of affairs. At no 
time between the Conquest and the Reformation, 
were the commons particularly well affected to the 



AN OLD SUBJECT. 307 

Norman kings or satisfied with the state of England, 
and such vigorous but unsuccessful leaders of revolt 
had from time to time appeared as William Fitzos- 
bert, surnamed Longbeard, in the reign of Richard 
the First, Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, and John Ball, in 
the reign of Eichard the Second, and one Cheney 
or Thaney, a fuller of Canterbury, calling himself 
c ' Bluebeard, " a few months prior to the time when 
Cade himself appeared as the more formidable oppo- 
nent of the government. 

Bluebeard's career was short. He was taken in 
arms in Canterbury, sent to London for trial, con- 
demned to death, and beheaded. With the view of 
striking terror into the minds of his fellow-citizens, 
who were suspected of too much sympathy with his 
cause, the sheriffs of London were ordered to send 
the traitor's head to Canterbury, to be fixed on a 
pole over the gate; but so great was his popu- 
larity in Kent, that the sheriffs had the greatest 
difficulty in fulfilling this part of their duty, 
most people being afraid to take charge of the 
head, lest their lives should be taken by the 
mob. The discontent in England at this time was 
remarkably bitter. It was partly occasioned by 
the inglorious issues of the war in France, and 
the cession of the Duchies of Anjou and Maine, 
once appanages of the crown of England; partly 
by the misgovernment of the king at home — 



308 NEW LIGHT ON 

the consequence of his own weakness of character 
— his subjection to his stronger minded and impe- 
rious queen and the sway that he allowed unworthy 
favourites to exercise over him ; partly by the pre- 
tensions of the House of York to the throne, and 
partly , if not chiefly, by the constant illegal and 
extortionate demands which were made upon that 
very sore place in the estimation of all Englishmen, 
then as now — the pocket of the people. The Duke 
of Suffolk, the queen's favourite, who had long 
exercised a malign influence, had been banished and 
slain — to the great displeasure of the king, and 
more especially of Queen Margaret ; and Humphrey, 
Duke of Gloucester, the protector of England during 
the king's long minority, had been treacherously 
murdered, to Henry's exceeding shame and sorrow. 
The sturdy commons of Kent were louder in their 
dissatisfaction than the commons in other parts of 
England ; though the discontent elsewhere was by 
no means of a gentle character. The anger of the 
Kentish men was particularly excited by a report 
that the whole county was to be laid waste, and 
turned into a deer forest, in punishment for the 
murder of the Duke of Suffolk, with which the men 
of Kent had nothing to do. The Duke of York, 
with an eye to his own interest, took advantage of 
the growing ill-will of the commons, and fostered 
and fomented it by every means in his power. He 



AN OLD SUBJECT. 309 

found an instrument ready to his hands in John 
Cade, a gentleman of Ashford, in Kent,, supposed 
by some to be a near relative of his own, and a true 
scion of the House of Mortimer. However that 
may be, Cade had served under the duke in the 
Irish expedition in 1449 with great honour and 
bravery. " About this time/' says honest John 
Stow, in his " Annales of England/' " began a new 
rebellion in Ireland, but Richard Duke of York, 
being sent thither to appease the same, so assuaged 
the furie of the wild and savage people there, that 
he won such favour among them, as could never 
be separated from him and his lineage." Cade's 
gallant behaviour on the battle field, and his striking 
personal resemblance to the Mortimers, marked him 
out to the ambitious Duke of York as a person who 
might be safely trusted with his cause among the 
Kentish commons ; and Cade, assuming the name 
of Mortimer, lent himself heartily to the project. 
The fires of discontent smouldered all over England, 
and in Kent needed but a strong breath to blow 
them into a blaze. Such a breath was found in the 
person and the pretensions of Cade. 

On Whit- Sunday, the 24th of May, all measures 
for an outbreak having been previously taken by the 
adherents of the Duke of York and the personal 
friends of Cade, the commons of Kent in large 
numbers flocked to Ashford, where Cade resided,. 



310 NEW LIGHT ON 

well armed, and ready to serve under his banner. 
Day by day their numbers increased, and by the 
Saturday following he found himself at the head of 
a host so numerous as to warrant him in marching 
upon London. On Sunday, the 31st of May, he 
encamped upon Blackheath, his army amounting, in 
the computation of the time, which was probably 
much exaggerated, to one hundred thousand men. 
He took the title of Captain of Kent, and aspired 
to talk with the king, as potentate with potentate. 

The city of London sympathised with his cause. 
The rising spread from Kent to Essex, Sussex, and 
Surrey ; and in a short time Cade had force at his 
command sufficient, if judiciously handled, to revo- 
lutionise the kingdom, and seat the Duke of York 
upon the throne. His first proceedings were emi- 
nently cautious, prudent, and statesmanlike. His 
great error was that he did not boldly march into 
London when the time was ripe and the Londoners 
favourable, but was content to establish his head- 
quarters in Southwark. His misfortune was that 
he was unable to control his followers, and prevent 
them from pillaging the merchants; and that he 
was not supported in proper time by the Duke of 
York. For a month he lay encamped on Black- 
heath, to the great consternation of the king and his 
court, and levied contributions on the country round, 
granting free passes to all who were well affected 



AN OLD SUBJECT. 311 

to Ms cause; promising future payment for all goods 
and provisions supplied for the use of his army; 
forbidding pillage and robbery under the penalty of 
death, which he more than once inflicted upon a dis- 
obediert follower ; and acting in all respects as if he 
were a legally-appointed general, waging a legitimate 
war. Towards the king's person he expressed the 
utmost devotion, and declared that his sole purpose 
in taking arms was the removal of evil counsellors 
from the loyal presence, and the peaceable redress of 
the grievances of the people. His " Complaint of 
the Commons of Kent and Cause of the great 
Assembly on Blackheath," as textually set forth in 
Stow's " Innales," are ranged under seventeen dis- 
tinct heads. This document asserted that the com- 
mons of Kent were not guilty of the murder of the 
Duke of Suffolk, and protested against the threat 
of converting the county into a " wilde foreste," in 
punishmsnt thereof. It furthermore alleged that 
the king wasted the revenues of the crown upon his 
favourit3s, and laid taxes upon the people to supply 
the defciency thus created ; that the lords of the 
blood royal {i.e. of the house of York) were put out 
of the royal presence, and other mean persons of 
lower nature exalted and made of his privy council ; 
that the people of the realm were not paid for the 
stuff ind purveyance taken for the use of the king's 
household ; and that the king's retainers and favour- 



312 NEW LIGHT ON 

ites made a practice of accusing innocent Jews 
of treason and other crimes, in order to gain 
possession of their estates. One chief cause of the 
disaffection was the harsh and unjust collection of 
a tax called the " fifteen penny/' amounting to the 
fifteenth of every Jew's annual income. Another 
was the illegal interference of the court in the free 
election of the knights of the shire ; and another, 
the gross venality and corruption of the officials in 
every department of the state. This " complaint/' 
whether drawn up by Cade himself or inspired by 
him, was highly creditable to his ability.; It was 
accompanied by another paper, entitled jThe Re- 
quests by the Captain of the Great Assembly in 
Kent." This document consisted of five fcerse and 
significant paragraphs. The first set forth the Cap- 
tain's loyalty to his sovereign lord the king, and 
all his true lords, spiritual and temporal, and his 
design that he should reign like a "king royal" 
and a true christian king anointed ; the second 
expressed the Captain's desire that the king- should 
avoid all the false progeny and affinity of the Duke 
of Suffolk, and take to his person the true brds of 
the realm, notably the high and mighty prince the 
Duke of York ; the third, his desire that immediate 
punishment should be inflicted upon the murierers 
of the excellent Duke of Gloucester (Duke Hum- 
phrey) \ the fourth was an accusation of treason 



AN OLD SUBJECT. 313 

against, and demand of punishment on, all who 
were concerned in the loss or alienation of Anjou 
and Maine, and the other possessions of the English 
crown in France. The fifth — a comprehensive article 
— denounced the extortion daily used among the 
common people : and " that gr eerie waxe, was freely 
used to the perpetual destruction of the king's true 
commons of Kent." It is this mention of green 
wax, with which exchequer writs, so loudly com- 
plained of by Cade, appear to have been sealed, 
that excited the mirth of the dramatist — when he 
makes Cade say, ' c Is not this a lamentable thing, 
that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made 
parchment, and that parchment scribbled o'er should 
undo a man ? Some say the bee stings, but I say 
it is the bees' wax, for I did but seal once to a thing, 
and I was never mine own man since." 

This paragraph further complained of several 
kinds of extortion to which the commons were 
subjected, and specially named four extortioners 
and false traitors, who were to be punished as an 
example to similar evil-doers, — one of whom named 
Cromer, Sheriff of Kent, afterwards fell into 
Cade's hands, and was decapitated. 

King Henry, urged on by his strong-minded 
queen and by the people in her interest — whose 
heads would have been in very considerable danger 
had Cade been triumphant — resolved, after misgiv- 



314 NEW LIGHT ON 

ings which, to a man of his easy, amiable nature, 
were probably both sore and long-protracted, to 
take the field against Cade. He could muster, 
however, no more than fifteen thousand men against 
Cade's one hundred thousand. Cade, who did not 
wish to fight the king, for whose (< sacred person " he 
expressed much affection, retired unexpectedly from 
Blackheath to Sevenoaks. Henry did not follow; 
but despatched a force under Sir Humphrey 
Stafford, to do battle with the formidable rebel. 
Sir Humphrey and his brother were killed, and 
their force routed with great loss. Cade, highly 
elated, returned to Blackheath ; and the poor king, 
losing courage, retreated to the very heart of 
England — to Kenilworth Castle, leaving to others 
the task, either of fighting or parleying with 
the leader of the commons. The king-, as Hall's 
Chronicle reports, was not quite certain of the 
fidelity of his own troops. " The king's army," 
says the historian, " being at Blackheath, and hear- 
ing of his discomfiture (that of Sir Humphrey 
Stafford), began to grudge and murmur among 
themselves ; some wishing the Duke of York at 
home to aid his cousin (the Captain of Kent), some 
desiring the overthrow of the king and his counsel, 
others openly crying out on the queen and her 
accomplices." The circumstances were evidently 
serious, and Cade was well nigh master of the 



AN OLD SUBJECT. 315 

situation. To allay the popular excitement, the 
king was advised to commit several of the persons 
against whom the tide of indignation ran strongest 
to the Tower — notably, the Lord Saye, and his son- 
in-law, Cromer, the sheriff of Kent ; both of whom 
were held in particular disesteem by the commons 
of Kent. This concession, however, was not suffi- 
cient to satisfy either Cade or the commons, and 
Cade marched back from the scene of his little 
victory at Sevenoaks to his old quarters at Black- 
heath, to confer with his friends in the city of 
London. On the part of the king, or rather of 
the queen, two powerful nobles were deputed to 
wait upon him in his camp, and ascertain on what 
conditions he would lay down his arms, and disband 
his followers. Cade was equal to the encounter of 
argument, and though described by Shakespeare as 
a coarse and illiterate ruffian, he was found to be a 
person of a very different stamp by the Archbishop 
of Canterbury and Humphrey Duke of Buckingham, 
the two great peers who sought a conference with 
him. Hall describes Cade as " a young man of a 
goodly stature and a pregnant wit." The lords 
" found him," he adds, " sober in communication, 
wise in disputing, arrogant in heart, stiff in opinion, 
and by no means possible to be persuaded to dis- 
solve his army, except the king in person would 
come to him, and consent to all things which he 
would require." 



316 NEW LIGHT ON 

Cade was now at the very zenith of his fortunes, 
and had the Duke of York, then absent in Ireland, 
hastened over to his support, it is likely that the 
White Eose would have taken the place of the Eed, 
and that Henry the Sixth would have had to mora- 
lise sooner than he did upon the miseries that 
encompassed anointed kings in the troublous age 
in which he lived and suffered. But the Duke of 
York did not make his appearance, and Cade was 
left to himself to fight the battle of the commons, 
rather than the battle of the claimant to the crown. 
But as it happens in all times, there are men whose 
heads are turned with prosperity, and Cade was of 
the number. He struggled bravely against adver- 
sity, but good fortune was too much for him. He 
made a triumphal entry from Southwark into the 
city over the bridge, which was then the sole means 
of ingress for an army ; and, passing London Stone 
in Watling Street, struck it with his sword in the 
pride of his heart, as if to take possession, exclaim- 
ing, " Now is Mortimer Lord of this City ? " And 
he was lord of it : and, could he have held his fol- 
lowers in order, might have made himself dictator 
of the kingdom, and locum-tenens for his royal 
master, the duke. But he could not control the 
passions of the Kentish men, who thirsted for the 
blood of Lord Saye, the high treasurer, and of his 
son-in-law Cromer, the sheriff. The king, on taking 



AN OLD SUBJECT. 317 

his departure, had not left the city entirely at the 
mercy of the insurgents, but had left a valiant 
commander, one Matthew Gough, whom Stow 
quaintly calls " a manly and warly man/' in com- 
mand of the Tower when he and his court effected 
their ignominious retreat to Kenilworth, with strict 
orders to watch the movements of the citizens, and 
prevent them from lending effective assistance to 
Cade. All but the very wealthiest of the inhabi- 
tants were on the side of the rebellion, and even 
some of these wavered in their allegiance to the 
weak sovereign and his corrupt courtiers. On 
the 3rd of July, Cade, for the second time, entered 
the city from Southwark, amid the acclamations of 
the people ; and proceeding to the Guildhall, where 
the Lord Mayor sat for the administration of jus- 
tice, ordered rather than requested that functionary 
to send for Lord Saye to the Tower, and have him 
arraigned forthwith, for malfeasances in his office 
and for oppressing the people. Lord Saye took 
objection to the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction, and 
demanded to be tried by his peers ; but Cade's 
followers — whether with or without the order or 
concurrence of the Captain does not very clearly 
appear — laid violent hands on the unhappy noble- 
man, led him out to the conduit in Cheapside, 
where they struck off his head and placed it upon a 
pole. They afterwards drew his naked body through 



318 NEW LIGHT ON 

the streets from Cheapside to Cade's head- quarters 
in South wark. A similar fate befell Cromer, the 
unpopular sheriff of Kent; and the ferocious mul- 
titude, bearing his head upon a pole, presented his 
dead lips to the dead lips of Lord Saye, as if the 
two were kissing, to the great delight of the rabble 
and to the disgust of the respectable citizens. That 
evening Cade dined with Philip Malpas, an alder- 
man and wealthy draper, well affected to his cause ; 
but unluckily, some of his unruly followers, setting 
at nought Cade's edict against pillage, despoiled 
the rich merchant's house, and carried off his plate 
and other valuables. This and a similar robbery, 
committed on the following day at the house of 
another wealthy citizen named Gherstis, proved to 
be the turning point of Cade's fortunes. The lead- 
ing citizens, though alarmed at the turbulence of 
the mob in the murder of Lord Saye and the sheriff 
of Kent, might have forgiven murder, but could 
not forgive pillage ; and it was resolved by the Lord 
Mayor and aldermen, counselled by the " manly 
and warly " soldier at the Tower, that when Cade 
next left the city for Southwark, his departure 
should, if possible, be final, and that his re-entry 
over the bridge should be opposed by the whole 
available force both of the Tower and of the city. 
Had Cade, in the first flush of victory, established 
himself in the heart of London, as he might easily 



AN OLD SUBJECT. 319 

have done,, this difficulty would have been avoided. 
Matthew Gough seems to have been well aware of 
the strategic mistake the Kentish leader had thus 
committed, and undertook to defend the bridge the 
next time that Cade and his followers attempted to 
cross it. He had not to wait long for his opportu- 
nity. At nine o'clock in the evening of Sunday, 
the 5th of July; having in the morning caused one 
of his followers to be beheaded for pillage, with a 
view no doubt of conciliating the wealthy Lon- 
doners and proving to them that he individually 
had no part in such acts, Cade, at the head of a 
company, attempted to enter the city. Stow thus 
tells what ensued : 

" On the fifth of July, the Captaine being* in 
Southwarke, caused a man to be beheaded there, 
and that day entred not the Citie. When night 
was come, the Mayor and the Citizens with Mathew 
Gough, kept the passage of the bridge and defended 
the Kentishmen which made great force to re-enter 
the Citie. Then the Captaine seeing this bicker- 
ing, went to harness, and assembled his people, and 
set so fiercely upon the Citizens, he drave them 
back from the stoupes in Southwarke, or bridge 
foote, unto the drawbridge, in defending whereof 
many a man was drowned and slaine. Among the 
which was John Sutton, alderman, Mathew Gough, 
a squire of Wales, and Roger Hoisand, citizen. 



320 NEW LIGHT ON 

This skirmish continued all night till nine of the 
clocke on the morrow, so that sometime the Citi- 
zens had the better, and sometimes the other, but 
ever they kept them on the bridge so that the Citi- 
zens never passed much the bulwarke at the bridge 
foote, nor the Kentishmen no farther than the 
drawbridge ; thus continuing the cruel fight, to the 
destruction of much people on both sides. Lastly, 
after the Kentishmen were put to the worst, a truce 
was agreed for certaine houres." 

The disaffection of the citizens of London, and 
its hourly if not momentary increase, becoming 
known to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was 
at the same time Lord High Chancellor of England 
— a man who combined the wariness of a priest 
with the astuteness of a lawyer — that eminent func- 
tionary, having full powers from the king, took 
advantage of the opportunity to proclaim a pardon 
to Cade and all his followers, if they would lay 
down their arms and disperse. The offer acted 
magically upon Cade's force, disheartened alike by 
the defection of the Londoners, the non-arrival of 
the Duke of York, and their own repulse on London 
Bridge, and they began to desert. Cade, however, 
was not wholly disheartened, but consented to meet 
the Lord Chancellor at the church of St. Margaret's, 
Southwark, and discuss the matter amicably. The 
Lord Chancellor insisted upon absolute and un- 



AN OLD SUBJECT. 321 

qualified submission: Cade, on Lis part, insisted 
that all the seventeen articles of the complaint of 
the Commons, as set forth by him, should be ac- 
cepted and acted upon by the king. The Lord 
Chancellor, having fought out the matter as long as 
he could, and finding Cade not to be won over by 
flattering speeches and fine promises, agreed to the 
terms imposed. The fact was notified to Cade's 
army, who, forthwith, imagining the ends of the 
insurrection to have been achieved, began in large 
numbers to take their departure to their homes. 
Cade, however, mistrusted the Lord Chancellor's 
powers, and prevailed upon a certain portion of his 
followers to hold by him and remain under arms 
until the king and parliament, assembled at West- 
minster for the purpose, should solemnly ratify the 
agreement. But Cade was not sufficiently sup- 
ported. The defection, the lukewarmness, or the 
open hostility of the Londoners, perhaps a combi- 
nation of all these, had so disheartening an effect 
upon the " Commons," that his once mighty hosts 
melted almost entirely away, and he found himself 
within less than two days at the head of a poor 
remnant, numbering less than a thousand men. "Not 
wholly beaten, having still a hope left of the Kentish 
people, Cade made his way to Eo Chester, with the 
intention of making a new appeal to the oppressed 
Commons 3 but it was too late. His followers had 

y 



222 NEW LIGHT 02T 

not their leader's courage or honesty of purpose, and 
fell to fighting about the miserable military chest 
which they had carried away with them. In five 
days Cade was wholly deserted, and fled for his life*. 
A proclamation was forthwith published, offering a 
reward for his head, dead or alive, on the ground that 
he had scorned the king's pardon, and persisted in 
waging war against the royal authority after terms 
of surrender and compromise had been agreed upon. 
Proclamations for the arrest of offenders, whether 
in civil or criminal cases, are proverbially unfavour- 
able in their descriptions of the personal appearance 
?,nd antecedents of the persons whom it is sought 
to capture. In Cade's case there was no exception 
to this ancient, and it may be added, this modern, 
rule. He was described as an Irishman, which he 
was not; as one who had in Surrey, while in the 
service of Sir Thomas Dacres, feloniously slain a 
woman with child, and of having fled to France to 
escape the consequences of this act, and while there 
of taking up arms on " the French part " against 
the English. A thousand marks were offered for 
the head of this false traitor. The proclamation 
produced speedy effect. The once popular idol was 
deserted on every hand : none were so poor as to 
do him reverence, none so charitable as to give him 
a crust of bread, or a glass of water, in his need ; 
and, like Masaniello and Rienzi, he found that the 



AN OLD SUBJECT. 323 

same voices, wliicli could clieer and shout in the 
days of his prosperity, could curse him as lustily in 
the hour of his calamity. The proclamation was 
issued on the 10th of July, and on the 15th he was 
discovered in the garden of one Alexander Iden or 
Eden, in Heathfield, in Sussex, and slain after a 
gallant and desperate attempt to defend himself. 
His head was taken to London, affixed upon the 
bridge, and his quarters distributed among the 
various towns and districts, where the disaffection, 
of which he was the leader, was supposed to be the 
most widely spread. One quarter was sent to 
Blackheath ; a second to Norwich, where the bishop 
(Walter Harpe) was supposed to favour the cause 
of the Duke of York ; a third to Salisbury ; and the 
fourth to Gloucester, where the abbot of St. Peter's 
bad influence over the people, and was known, or 
suspected, to be a Yorkist. 

Thus lived and died John Cade, the victim of 
the violence which he provoked ; but in his career 
no more worthy of blame than many more illus- 
trious personages who shared his opinions, and 
brought them to a more successful issue. The Duke 
of York, as readers of English history will remem- 
ber, though he did not aid his faithful Captain, as he 
ought to have done, at the right moment, lived for 
years afterwards to keep England in a state of agi- 
tation and civil war by his pretensions ; but did not 



324 NEW LIGHT ON 

mount the uneasy throne to which he aspired, but 
left his pretensions to his son Edward, who made 
them good by his strong right arm, and wore the 
regal crown, which, in those days, was but too often 
a crown of agony both to those who inherited or 
conquered it. 

The last mention of Cade in history appears in 
Stow, under the date of January, 1451, seven months 
after the collapse of the great rebellion of the com- 
mons. The discontent, even then, appears to have 
smouldered ; for the merciful King Henry, who 
loved not to take life, was induced by the advice of 
the queen and her evil counsellors, whom it was the 
object of Cade and the Duke of York to remove 
from his person, to take a journey into Kent, for the 
purpose of striking terror. 

cc The 18th of January, the king* with certain 
lordes, and his justices rode towards Kent, and 
there indicted and arraigned many, whereof to the 
number of twenty- six were put to death, eight at 
Canterbury, and the residue in other townes of 
Kent and Surrey. And the king returning out of 
Kent on the 23rd of Februarie, the men of that 
countrey, naked to their shirtes in great numbers, 
met him on the Blackheath; and there on their 
knees asked mercy, and had their pardon. Then 
the king rode royally through the citie of London, 
and was of the citizens joyfully received; and the 



AN" OLD SUBJECT. 325 

same clay against the king's coming to the citie, 
nine heads of the Kentishmen that had been put to 
death were set on London Bridge; and the cap- 
tained s head, that stood there before was set in the 
middest of them." 

But as long as the Duke of York lived, all the 
efforts of the king's counsellors — whether they were 
conciliatory or the reverse — were of little avail for 
the tranquillization of the commons; and seven 
years after the death of Cade a proclamation was 
issued for the apprehension of one Eobert Poynings, 
uncle of the Countess of Northumberland, who had 
acted as Cade's carver and sword-bearer, and who, 
during the whole of this time, had been actively 
engaged in stirring up the commons of Kent to new 
rebellion, though with but slight success. 

It has hitherto been considered, on the authority 
of Shakesj)eare and the early historians — not only 
that Cade was a vulgar " rowdy" and a man of no 
education or acquirements — but that his followers 
were a mere mob and rabble of the very lowest 
order. It appears, however, — from the Patent Eoll 
of the twenty- eighth year of Henry the Sixth, which 
has recently been examined, and formed the subject 
of an interesting paper, which was read by Mr. Wil- 
liam Durrant Cooper, at a meeting of the Archaeolo- 
gical Society of Kent, at Ashford in that county, the 
scene of Cade's earliest exploits, — that this is a mis- 



328 NEW LIGHT ON 

take, and that among those who were pardoned for 
their participation in Cade's rebellion, are the names- 
of several of the richest and most influential people of 
the county. There were knights, abbots, esquires, 
gentlemen, and yeomen, besides handicraftsmen of 
all sorts. " Cade's army was not a disorganized 
mob," says Mr. Cooper, " nor a chance gathering. 
In several hundreds the constables duly, and as if 
legally, summoned the men and many parishes.) 
particularly Marden, Penshurst, Hawkhurst, North- 
fleet, Boughton, Smarden, and Pluckley, furnished 
as many men as could be found in our own day, fit 
for arms." Among the mayors, bailiffs, and con- 
stables, pardoned for having summoned the people 
to join Cade's standard — first at Ashford, and 
second at Blackheath, after his victory at Seven- 
oaks — were the mayors of Canterbury, Chatham,. 
Maidstone, Rochester, Sandwich, and Queens- 
borough; the bailiff of Folkestone, and the con- 
stables of eight-and-twenty hundreds and villages, 
which are duly set forth in the roll. Among the 
gentlemen pardoned were several who had been, 
and several who afterwards became, sheriffs of Kent. 
Many families, who to this day hold their heads- 
high in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, will find the 
names of their ancestors in this document — if they 
choose to look for them ; while in the list will be' 
found many names once common that have now 



AN OLD SUBJECT. 327 

wholly disappeared, to crop up, perhaps, in unex- 
pected places in America, 

Shakespeare puts into the mouth of the dying 
Cade, after his fatal combat with Iden in the gai- 
den, the words : 

Tell Kent, from me, she hath lost her best man — 

and it does not appear, from an impartial review of 
his whole story and the light thrown upon it by 
documentary evidence, that the boast was at all 
uu founded. 




01M SOME POPULAB AND UNPOPULAR 
POETS. 




T is a great thing to be a popular poet. 
Your name is in the mouths of young 
ladies (if there be any good to you in 

J that)_, and your words are sometimes 
quoted with approval by statesmen and philosophers", 
and may help to mould the public opinion of your 
time — an advantage which is pleasant, if it be not 
always profitable. But will your popularity last be- 
yond your lifetime ? Will it last even until you die ? 
There's the rub-a-rub, which, if unaccompanied by 
substantial reward, is apt to infuse a little, just a 
little drop of gall and bitterness into the cup of 
your apparent good fortune. In the reign of 
Charles the Second there flourished four poets : 
three of them were popular, and one was not. Let 
me say a few words about each of them, and see 
what the popularity of the three was worth, and 



ON SOME POETS. 329 

what came of it. After that we shall consider the 
unpopularity of the fourth. 

The first was one Thornas, better known as ' ' Tom " 
D'Urfey, just as people now talk affectionately, 
though possibly somewhat irreverently, of Ci Tom 3i 
Moore, " Tom " Campbell, and " Tom " Hood. He 
was the pet and idol of his age; and Charles II. 
was more than once seen walking in the Mall in 
St. James's Park in familiar talk with him, his dogs 
and his courtiers falling behind. Nay, the merry 
monarch carried his complaisance still further, and 
condescended to sing duets with him, Tom and he 
holding the music sheet between them- — a fact which 
the poet has recorded in his memoirs with great 
gusto and satisfaction. D'TJrfey was principally 
known for his songs, which he wrote to old and 
popular tunes — sometimes, if not invariably, adopt- 
ing as much as was quotable of the old words and 
choruses to new themes, and otherwise altering and 
amending, as Robert Burns did with the popular 
songs of Scotland more than a century later. The 
king was partial to the fiddle, as the violin was then 
called both by the fashionable and the unfashionable, 
and to those lively airs and jig tunes of which the 
fiddle was the best exponent. When in exile, with 
but slight chance of ever sitting on the throne of 
his ancestors, and when he could but ill afford 
luxuries of any kind, he lavished such money as he 



330 POPULAR AND 

could command upon fiddles and fiddlers. When 
after the death of the Great Protector, the Common- 
wealth of England found itself without a strong 
hand to rule it, and "the king enjoyed his own 
again," one of the first things he did, after General 
Monk had made things perfectly safe for him, was 
to engage a corps of four-and-twenty fiddlers, to play 
for him during dinner and at his pleasant little pri- 
vate parties and conversations in the evening. It 
was on these occasions that D'TJrfey's services were 
called into requisition to sing his own songs; not for 
reward and emolument, but wholly for the honour 
and glory of amusing the king and basking in the 
pleasant sunshine of his countenance, and that of 
the fair and frail ladies in whose society he took 
most pleasure. At the time of the Eestoration, Tom 
was a gay young fellow of twenty-three, who had 
abandoned the study of the law for the pursuits of 
literature and conviviality. During the whole reign 
of Charles he lived like a prosperous gentleman, 
making small means go a long way in keeping up 
appearances; and being always a welcome guest, 
not only at the palace, but at the houses of the 
nobility and rural gentry, where, after dinner, he 
would sing his own songs without much, if any, 
pressing, and where the hosts and other guests 
would join lustily in the chorus. A collection of his 
songs, under the somewhat coarse title, though not 



UNPOPULAR POETF. 331 

considered coarse in that age,, of "Pills to purge 
Melancholy/' was published by Tom, and had a 
highly remunerative sale. Tom was not in such 
favour with the gloomy James II. and the taciturn 
William III. as he was with the merry monarch ; 
but in the reign of Queen Anne he was again taken 
notice of by the Court, and received fifty guineas 
from Her Majesty for writing some verses in ridicule 
of the Princess Sophia, Electress and Duchess Dow- 
ager of Hanover, and mother of George I. A sample 
verse will suffice : 

The crown's far too weighty 

For shoulders of eighty ; 
She could not sustain such a trophy. 

Her hand, too, already 

Has grown so unsteady ; 

She can't hold a sceptre, 

So Providence kept her 
Away — poor old Dowager Sophy ! 

Ten times as much for this vile doggrel as Milton 
received for " Paradise Lost ! " But Tom's songs 
were better than his satirical pieces, and had a joy- 
ous ring about them, which commended them to the 
gay cavaliers and " Anonymas" of the period. Four 
of them, out of a vast multitude, have survived, in a 
lingering state of quasi- vitality, to our day — " The 
Brave Men of Kent," " Dame Durden," " The Bonny 
Milk Maid," and " Within a Mile of Edinburgh." 
The Kentish men, sometimes over their cups and in 



332 POPULAR AND 

their ale-houses, sing the song that Tom wrote in 
their honour, with its roystering chorus : 

The men of Kent, 

So loyal, brave, and free, 
'Mong Britain's race, if one surpass, 

A man of Kent is he. 

" Dame Durden" makes a capital glee, and the 
words and music rattle along together in a manner 
that King Charles heartily approved of, and which 
will long preserve the little ditty in popular favour. 

Dame Durden kept five serving girls 

To carry the milking pail ; 
She also kept five labouring men 
To use the spade and flail. 
'Twas Moll and Bet, and Doll and Kate, and Dorothy 

Draggletail, 
And Tom and Dick, and Joe and Jack, and Humphrey 

with his flail ; 
And Kitty is a charming girl to carry the milking pail. 

" The Bonny Milk Maid " is a good description 
of a country lass by a poet who was pre-eminently a 
cockney. But like other cockneys of his day and 
ours, he took much real enjoyment in rural scenes ; 
and his milkmaid is a true picture of a rustic, and 
not such a caricature of a high-born damsel mas- 
querading as a shepherdess, as was the fashion of 
that very artificial age. 



UNPOPULAR POETS. 333 

"When cold bleak winds do roar, 
And flowerets spring no more, 

The fields that were seen, 

So pleasant and green, * 
By winter all candied o'er ; 

Oh, how the town lass 

Looks with her white face 

And lips so deadly pale ; 
But it is not so with those that go 
Through frost and snow, with cheeks that glow, 

To carry the milking pail. 

' ' Within a Mile of Edinburgh Town " was writ- 
ten to please Queen Anne, who was fond of Scottish 
music, as became a scion of the House of Stuart. 
But little of it 3 as now sung, was written by D'Urfey, 
and the air in imitation of the Scottish manner was 
composed for Vauxhall Gardens towards the end of 
the last century by Hook, the father of Theodore 
Hook, the wit and novelist. 

Tom, who had ceased to be able to sing* in the 
sere and yellow leaf of his age, fell into neglect, if 
not into penury, and a benefit was arranged for him 
at Drury Lane Theatre, which both Steele and Ad- 
dison recommended and publicly supported. The 
latter was particularly cordial in the " Spectator." 
" Tom D'Urfey," he said, ' c has made the world 
merry ; and I hope they will make him easy as long- 
as he stays amongst us. This I will take upon me 
to say, they cannot do a kindness to a more divert- 
ing companion, or a more cheerful, honest, or good- 



334 POPULAR AND 

natured man." Tom was never married, and as a 
man abont town, and a frequenter of the coffee- 
houses, was the best known personage of his day. 
But he long outlived his popularity, and his name 
and his works are now scarcely known except to 
literary antiquaries. The poet lived to the good 
old age of seventy-four, and is buried in St. Jameses 
Church, Piccadilly, where a stone, with the simple 
inscription — "Tom D'Urfey, dyed Feb. ye 26, 
1723," points out the spot where he lies. 

The second of the popular poets of the time was 
n young Welsh lady, a Mrs. Katherine Phillips, who 
was known under the pseudonym of " Orinda." By 
her contemporaries she was called " the matchless 
Orinda," and " the most deservedly admired Mrs. 
Katherine Phillips." John Evelyn in his Diary, 
under date of the 4th of February, 1667-8, records 
that he saw the tragedy of Horace, written by the 
virtuous Mrs. Phillips, acted before their majesties. 
He underscored and emphasised the word "vir- 
tuous" to give point to his allusion that "the 

Castiemaine," the king's mistress, who was present, 
wore diamonds worth £40,000, " far outshining 
those of the queen." Pepys in his Diary expresses 
his opinion that " Horace " was " a silly tragedy." 
In this opinion it was evident that Evelyn did not 
coincide, for he afterwards cited Orinda "as among 
the most illustrious persons of our nation," and his 



TJNTOPTJLAU POETS. 335 

wife, good Mrs. Evelyn, in contrasting her talents 
and character with that of the Duchess of New- 
castle, to whom she had lately been introduced, 
gives Orinda the palm. " The duchess is an ori- 
ginal. I hope she may never have a copy. Never 
did I see a woman so full of herself, so amazingly 
vain and ambitious. What contrary miracles does 
•our age produce ! This lady, and Mrs. Katherine 
Phillips. ;J The poems of " the matchless Orinda " 
circulated in manuscript among her friends, and 
some speculative and dishonest bookseller, having- 
contrived to procure copies of them, published them 
without her knowledge. The law of copyright was 
neither very clear nor very stringent in those days 
(Shakespeare's sonnets were printed without his 
consent) ; and instead of suing the printer or the 
publisher for this breach of the seventh command- 
ment, Mrs. Phillips was driven to the necessity of 
publishing her poems herself. She wrote to a friend 
whom, in the fashionable affectation of the day, she 
addressed as " Poliarchus," from a place in Wales, 
where she resided, setting- forth the annoyance that 
this surreptitious publication had caused her. " Is 
there," she querulously asked,." no retreat from the 
malice of this world ? I thought a rock in a moun- 
tain might have hidden me, and that it had been 
free for all to spend their solitudes in what reserves 
they pleased, and that our rivers, though they are 



336 POPULAR AND 

babblings would not have betrayed the follies of 
impertinent thoughts upon their banks; but 'tis 
only I who am that unfortunate person that cannot 
so much as think in private, but must have my 
imagination rifled, and exposed to play the mounte- 
bank, and dance upon the ropes to entertain all the 
rabble ; to undergo all the raillery of the wits and 
all the severity of the wise, and to be the sport of 
some that can, and of some that can't read a verse. 
This is a most cruel accident, and hath made so pro- 
portionate an impression upon me, that really it 
hath cost me a sharp fit of sickness since I heard it." 
Her friend Poliarchus contrived to stop the sale 
of the piratical edition, and undertook to bring out 
a correct one ; but the lady died of small-pox be- 
fore the book appeared, to the great sorrow of all 
the wits and fine ladies of the court. " The small- 
pox," says Poliarchus, in his introductory essay, 
" that malicious disease, as knowing how little she 
would have been concerned for her handsomeness, 
when at the best, was not satisfied to be as in- 
jurious a printer of her face as the other had been 
of her poems, but treated her with a more fatal 
cruelty than her stationer had treated them ; for 
though he, to her most sensible affliction, surrepti- 
tiously possessed himself of a false copy, and sent 
those children of her fancy into the world so mar- 
tyred that they were more unlike themselves than 



UNPOPULAR POETS. 337 

she could have been made had she escaped ; that 
murderous tyrant (the small-pox) with greater 
barbarity, seized unexpectedly upon her, the true 
original, and to the much juster affliction of all the 
world, violently tore her out of it, and hurried her 
untimely to the grave, upon the 22nd of June, 1664, 
she being then but thirty-one years of age." 

Poliarchus mentions to her praise, as something 
unusual in a lady, that her handwriting was good 
and her spelling correct. " She wrote familiar let- 
ters with strange readiness and facility, in a very 
fair hand and with perfect orthography. We might 
well have called her the English Sappho — she of all 
the female poets of former ages, being for her verses 
and her virtues both, the most highly valued. But 
she has called herself Orinda, a name that deserves 
to be added to the number of the Muses, and to live 
as long as they! Her merit should have had a 
statue of porphyry, wrought by some great artist 
equal in skill to Michael Angelo, that might have 
transferred to posterity the lasting image of so 
great a person ! " 

Cowley was as complimentary in verse as Po- 
liarchus was in prose; and in an elegy on her 
death, after rating the small-pox in round terms for 
its cruelty and spite in attacking so beautiful, witty, 
and inspired a person, he raised her high above all 

z 



338 POPULAR AND 

the poets and poetesses of her time, himself alone 
excepted : — 

The certain proofs of our Orinda's wit 
In her own lasting characters are writ, 
And they will long my praise of them survive, 
Though long, perhaps, too that may live ! 
The trade of glory managed by the pen, 
Though great it be, and everywhere is found, 
Does bring in but small profit to us men ; 
'Tis by the number of the sharers drown'd ; 
Orinda, on the female coasts of Tame, 
Engrosses all the goods of her poetic name - T 
She does no partner with her see, 
Does all the business there alone, which we 
Are forced to carry on by a whole company. 

The phrase, " the female coasts of Fame/' is a 
vile phrase, as vile as the " mobled queen" in 
Hamlet, though the conceit that there was but one 
poetess in England and many poets, does credit to 
Cowley's proficiency in the art of flattery. 

It is difficult to procure a copy of the poems of 
this paragon of poetesses, sole possessor of " the 
female coasts of Fame," nor does the surmounting 
of the difficulty repay the trouble it costs. Orinda 
was a devoted royalist, and her poems consist prin- 
cipally of odes and addresses to the king and queen, 
and to the great lords and ladies of the court, on 
their marriages, and other interesting personal 
events. One specimen of the talent, the wit, the 



UNPOPULAR POETS. 339 

cleverness, the genius, whichever it may be, of 
which our ancestors thought so highly, may serve 
to prove that they were easily pleased, and that 
the taste for poetry in their day was something 
very different from the taste of ours. She addresses 
a friend, one Mrs. Anne Owen, under the name of 
u Lucaria : " 

I did not live until this time 

Crown'd my felicity, 
When I could say without a crime, 

I am not thine, but thee. 

This carcass breath'd, and waked, and slept. 

So that the world believed 
There was a soul the motions kept, 

But they were all deceived. 

For as a watch by art is wound 

To motion, such was mine, 
But never had Orincla found 

A soul till she found thine. 

There is more in the same style, neither much 
worse nor much better. Where are now the works 
of " the matchless Orinda," delight of her age ? 
They sleep in her forgotten folio, and are as un- 
known to the people of the nineteenth century as 
the poems, if there be any, of the dwellers in 
another planet. 

Abraham Cowley, the last of the popular trio, is 
a poet of much greater mark than Tom D'Urfey and 
Mrs. Phillips, though his fame, or what is left of it, 



340 POPULAR AND 

depends more upon the account given of him in 
" Johnson's Lives of the Poets " than upon his own 
writings. If Mrs. Phillips was " the matchless f* 
to Cowley was reserved the epithet of " the incom- 
parable." He was essentially a man of his own 
time, and of no other, and neither looked before 
nor after — as all great poets do. His poems abound 
in conceits and prettinesses, in wordy quirks, in 
quibbles, and in quodlibets ; and when he gives birth 
to a great thought, as he sometimes does, he is apt 
to overlay it with words — to smother his Yenus, as 
it were, under the weight of her ribbons, her laces, 
her velvets, and her furbelows, till the poor beauty 
is scarcely able to waddle under the mass of finery. 
A tone of melancholy pervades his writings ; and 
as he calls himself " the melancholy Cowley," it is 
to be supposed that such was the real character of 
his mind, as well as of his poems. In one of- 
his compositions he asks, half ambitiously, half 
despondently, 

What shall I do to be for ever known, 
And make the age to come mine own ? 

Posterity, without thinking of him, has replied " No- 
thing ! " He was, however much he may have been 
admired in his own age, for his age, and for his age 
only. He was born in London in 1618, the son of 
a grocer in Meet Street. He died in 1667, in his- 



UNPOPULAR POETS. 341 

forty-ninth year, at his country house in Chertsey,. 
whither he had retired to live a life of rural and 
philosophic solitude. In his youth and early prime 
he was a royalist, involved in the troubles of the 
Revolution. His first step in life was an appoint- 
ment as private secretary to Lord Jercnyn, after- 
wards Earl of St. Albans, with whom he went to 
Paris in 1646, his principal duty being to translate 
from secret cipher the confidential correspondence 
of the king and queen. He remained abroad for 
ten years, living no one very well knew how. At 
the end of that time he returned to England,, 
ostensibly to pursue the practice of medicine, which 
he had studied, or feigned to study, while on the 
Continent, but, in reality, it is supposed, to' report 
the state of affairs in England to the exiled royal 
family and their friends in Paris. On the death 
of Cromwell, and the subsequent restoration of 
Charles II., he expected to obtain the Mastership 
of the Savoy, which it appears had been promised to 
him by Charles I. and by Charles II. But Charles II, 
forgot him, as he did so many other friends, though 
some tardy and inefficient amends were made for his 
zealous services by the grant of a beneficial lease of 
the queen's lands at Chertsey . Here he wrote poems, 
and cultivated flowers and vegetables ; but having 
overheated himself at haymaking in one of his own 
fields, he caught a violent cold, of which he died. 



£42 POPULAR AND 

All the minor poets and litterateurs of the day 
rushed into print, and sang odes and elegies in 
praise of the "incomparable" writer who had de- 
parted. And oblivion, stealing silently over his 
memory, left him, like others as great or greater, 
to the antiquarians of literature, a mere name, with 
the vaguest of memories attached to it. The late 
Sir Robert Peel, in a memorable speech in Par- 
liament, exhumed from the musty tomes where 
Cowley's poems slumber undisturbed, a very beau- 
tiful and striking passage, which, with a faint 
twinkle, will doubtless tend to preserve his memory 
as long as books of poetical extracts continue to be 
published. The poet speaks of a period of national 
peril, of impending civil strife, and of a deed un- 
perpetrated that, if perpetrated, would be one of 
national disgrace: 

Come the eleventh plague rather than this should be ! 

Come, sink us rather in the sea ! 

Come rather pestilence, and mow us down ! 

Come God's sword rather than our own ; 

Let rather Eoman come again, 

Or Saxon, Norman, or the Dane. 

In all the bonds we ever bore, 

We groan'd, we sigh'd, we wept — we never blush'd before ! 

I now arrive at the unpopular poet. All this 
time, when these and others of even a smaller 
calibre appeared as large as tritons to the critical 
minnows of that debased age, a truly great poet was 



UNPOPULAR POETS. 343 

alive. The people were not great readers, and 
nobody knew his poems. Few had ever heard of him. 
Those who had heard of him — King Charles and 
his courtiers among the number — shrugged their 
shoulders at mention of his name. He had mingled 
in politics, had made himself a power — in prose if 
not in verse, and had, unluckily for his fortunes, 
taken the losing side. He had been for Cromwell 
and the Commonwealth, and his fortunes had been 
wrecked by the Eestoration. He kept a little 
school for day-scholars in Bride Court, Fleet Street. 
He was old and blind. To speak of him, except 
with disrespect as a Roundhead and a bad subject,, 
was to incur the suspicion of the court and of all 
the fashionable people who took their tone from 
it. He earned his bitter and too scanty bread in 
agony and tears ; and was only too glad to accept a 
very mean and paltry dole, from a speculative book- 
seller who had faith in him (to the extent of five 
pounds) , for a work that has put many hundreds of 
thousands of pounds into the pockets of the printers 
and booksellers of the last two centuries. The 
name of this poor unpopular poet was John Milton. 
Few knew him in his own day. Everybody 
knows him in ours. His fame extends wherever 
the English language is spoken ; and his Lycidas, 
his Comus, his Sonnets, and his Paradise Lost, are 
part of the mind and education of every person of 



344 UNPOPULAR POETS. 

British blood or descent, who aspires to hold the po- 
sition of a gentleman or a lady, or to the possession 
of ordinary information on the subjects of English 
poetry and literature. Not to know Tom D'Urfey, 
Katherine Phillips,, and Abraham Cowley, the idols 
of their time, is neither a wonder nor a disgrace 
among well-educated people. JSTot to know John 
Milton and his immortal works, is to be a dunce or 
an ignoramus, or at least an exceedingly illiterate 
person. Popular poets, look to your laurels ! Un- 
popular poets, take heart of grace, and gain such 
satisfaction as you can from the hope that if this 
age knows you not, a wiser posterity will do you 
justice. 



THE END. 



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